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Some doors have appropriate hardware, well placed. The outside door handles of most modern automobiles are excellent examples of design. The handles are often recessed receptacles that simultaneously indicate the place and mode of action. Horizontal slits guide the hand into a pulling position; vertical slits signal a sliding motion. Strangely enough, the inside door handles for automobiles tell a different story. Here, the designer has faced a different kind of problem, and the appropriate solution has not yet been found. As a result, although the outside door handles of cars are often excellent, the inside ones are often difficult to find, hard to figure out how to operate, and awkward to use. From my experience, the worst offenders are cabinet doors. It is sometimes not even possible to determine where the doors are, let alone whether and how they are slid, lifted, pushed, or pulled. The focus on aesthetics may blind the designer (and the purchaser) to the lack of usability. A particularly frustrating design is that of the cabinet door that opens outward by being pushed inward. The push releases the catch and energizes a spring, so that when the hand is taken away, the door springs open. It’s a very clever design, but most puzzling to the first-time user.

Excerpted from ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ by Don Norman