Doors & affordances

Some doors tell you exactly how they want to be used: a flat plate says push, a vertical bar says pull. When the signal lies— a handle that looks pull-only but must be pushed—you get a Norman door: the right affordance, the wrong mapping.

Good interfaces do the same thing honest controls do: they match what you expect before you think about it. Bad ones look fine in a screenshot and waste your day in the real world.

(Inspired by Don Norman’s framing—this page is a short in-site note, not a substitute for the book.)