THE VIDEO SHELF · norman doors and affordances
It's not you. Bad doors are everywhere.
Vox's Joe Posner, with help from 99% Invisible, explains why bad doors are everywhere. It covers Don Norman's long-running complaint about doors and the idea that good design should not need instructions.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN uses it as the short, canonical explainer of Norman doors and affordances, linked in design and UX discussions.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Vox
- Topic
- norman doors and affordances
- Format
- explainer
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 6
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2019–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
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In Magit, the magical Git interface (2017)Yeah, but it's not supposed to. With good design it is immediately obvious whether the door is push or pull - even when the frame doesn't have any clear indications. For example, the door in [0] (apologies for the YT short) has no immediately clear …
crote on Hacker News · 2025-02
In The subtle art of designing physical controls for cars
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.