stupidity in design, part 1: locks

**I'll be starting a series of posts looking at stupid, impractical, and clumsy design. I'll probably throw in some posts in between the parts, and I have no idea how long I plan on keeping it up, but here goes with the first part:


When it comes to locks, most people don't have any problem. It's usually immediately obvious how to unlock and lock something.

However, once in a while, someone decides to be different, and this leads to problems. This manifests itself most clearly when it comes to door locks. 90% of the time, if a lock is in the horizontal position it means 'unlocked' and if it's in the vertical position it means 'locked.'

(Above: Guess what this means?)

But then, some smartass comes along and says to himself - why follow the norm, when I can express my individuality by reversing the positions? This, of course, has inevitably led to a few awkward moments as I fumbled with the lock for a few seconds as I was leaving someone's house. The man who first started this trend is probably laughing in his grave. Unless he's still alive, in which case I owe him a punch to the face.

It's even worse when there's a deadbolt - especially when the deadbolt and the door lock 'lock' in different positions. It's like Counterintuitivity 101.

Don't even get me started on the 'push in and twist' locks.

But besides door locks, there are locks for other things as well. This becomes a bit trickier, since there's not as established a norm for these locks. One prime example that comes to mind are the new windows we've recently placed in our home. Here's what the locks look like:

The locks close sideways. This is fine in itself, but the designer failed in one major aspect: there's no way to tell, at a glance, when a window's locked or not. I thought of just memorizing that 'right' means 'locked,' but then I realized that half the windows in our house lock in the opposite direction. Hm.

And remedying this is incredibly simple, too: all the designer needed to do is add a little marking - a tiny bump, a line, a subtle curve, anything - to indicate that one side is different than the other. From there, it's just knowing that the side with the marking is the side that's locked. Easy, right?

So why the hell don't people think about this stuff in the design process?