A Handle to Pull on a Door That You Push?
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As I'm leaving a restaurant, there's a handle to pull on the door that needs pushed.
Is there a reason for having such a handle? Incoming tornado... door swings open, so the handle is needed to bring the door back? Or is the sole purpose of said handle to make people feel like idiots as they try to pull the handle to leave? -
It looked cool so they decided to put it on there. I hate doors that offer handles on both sides when they can only open in one direction. You would think the usability of doors would've been nailed down by now, but so often it gets screwed up.
Have a handle on the outside to indicate you need to pull the door open and a simple metal plate on the inside to indicate you have to push it open. -
Or how about places that have double doors, but lock one, leaving no indication as to which door is useable, so that you stand there like an idiot pushing/pulling on a locked door. If you have 2 doors, why not have them both be useable? Or at least put up a sign?
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so people don't get their grubby mitts on other parts :P
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In the book, "The Universal Principles of Design," there is a great example of this as common nonsense and how a push panel should be an accepted convention.
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I hate that as well @sdasilva03! Ha @DanielWhyte :) It's gross seeing how much smudge is on the door plate.
@noel, I love that book, and recall that section. I'm curious if there is a need for the handle though... if the shop owner needs it to pull the door closer in order to lock it? It's still so annoying :/ -
There should be a kick panel! It should be okay to open a door by pushing it with your foot. Clean and easy. Or to open a door you should pull: http://www.toepener.com/
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@RoyAhuis Toepener is brilliant! I'm always kicking doors; O.C.D. etc.
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When you mentioned pushing the door with a foot I first thought this:
Lol.
Actually, pulling with my foot like they show for Toepener seems kinda awkward. Not to mention you lose balance when standing on one leg. -
I think in the instance of banks, they do this intentionally to give robbers a moment of confusion that might help in capturing them. But it is really irritating to the normal everyday person that feels like an idiot after they pull on the door.
I think the same reasoning is used for locking one door on a set of double doors in gas stations and other retail outlets. -
In our world where price is usually considered more important than quality, doors, as much else, is mass produced in modules. So as to be as cheap as possible. Then you must make something that can be hinged either way, be double, single, indoor, outdoor, have pane, any colour, texture etc. In addition, we are not interested in paying for good craftsmen, so to stick a steel plate on one side of the door, and a handle on the other would require two braincells.
I see more and more of this modularised production resulting in braindead applications.
In my country, often the doors inside a house are all identical, and that often means they all have keyholes and keys. Pretty pointless, usually, to be able to lock every single door in your entire house with keys, but it is apparently cheaper to buy them all the same, instead of trusting the building guy to understand that the toilets should have keys, the others not. Or that hinging the door to crash with the fridge is not so bright. Or, a recent favourite: to put the lightswitch on the hinged inside of a door. You would have to enter the pitch dark room, walk aroooouuuund the door, close it half-way, so any light from the other room is entirely obliterated, to blindly fumble around in the dark to reach the switch. I could go on.
The handle where you should push IS annoying, of course. On the other hand, outdoor doors usually swing outwards, for security reasons. There is of course also the possibility that the restaurant need to pull the door to fix latches when they close for the night.
