Aerial view of the Limbopad at Eindhoven University.

After the previous post on Wear and Tear and Use I couldn't let go of the concept of footpaths being worn out of the grass by users. It turns out the concept is known as desire paths, a term described by French scientist, philosopher and poet Gaston Bachelard in his book The Poetics of Space:

A term in landscape architecture used to describe a path that isn’t designed but rather is worn casually away by people finding the shortest distance between two points.

There even is a complete Flickr pool of desire path photos.

The Limbo Path
Though I did not find any traces of an architect deliberately using the concept, I did run into an example that comes close. A well known version of a desire path in Dutch academics is Einhoven's Limbo Path. At the technical university in Eindhoven many students from the Dutch region of Limburg are enroled, who are often called Limbo's. This group of students was/is notorious for not moving to Eindhoven, but rather commuting back and forth to Limburg. The shortest path between the university and the campus was over a lawn and over time a path emerged, which became known as the LimboPath. Interestingly, the university has institutionalized the path by paving it with concrete (see picture below) and has even put up an official sign saying 'Limbopad'.

These are doors in a busy hallway at my faculty. It features a Normaneske contradiction of a sign saying 'push' (duwen) and on the other hand the handles, allowing you - even indicating - to pull the doors. But what really caught my eye is that in some areas the paint is completely worn. It's pretty easy to spot in what area most users push this door.

Similarly I once heard the story of an architect that put a lawn without any paths around a newly erected building. After some weeks of using the building, the routes that the building's occupants took to the building became clear, because they were marked in the grass. Only then did the architect put in the 'official' footpaths, exactly in the place where the users wanted them. I don't know if the story is true, and who the architect might be (if you do know, please let me know!), but if it's not true, someone should start doing it.

I must admit, I kind of fell in love with the notion of spotting traces that tell you how people use a product. If only we could do the same with for example mobile phones: simply looking at the phone, and then seeing what features are used most and how they are used.

A nice side effect of being on vacation is that now and again you find yourself in a completely unfamiliar environment where - in interaction terms - you are a complete novice user. You don't have the experience and knowledge the people around you have, which makes you notice some small things that are annoying or particularly well thought-through. The picture above is one of the things I liked. On a terrace, a waitress puts a clothing pin on the bill, to prevent it from being 'gone with the wind.' Not an earth-shattering innovation or anything. Just nice; someone's paid attention here.

And then there was the time when I found myself in the ladies room of a Luxembourg gas station. Unintentionally that is. And I swear I'd seen two figures on the sign, indicating that this was the way to the restrooms. So next I expected two doors: men, women. Instead I found myself in the ladies room. Walking back I found out that I had been 'outwitted' by a bilingual Luxembourg toilet sign.

The product management tips blog wonders whether product integration decreases usability, because it leads to an abundance of functionality in one product:

So what has probably happened here - Toyota had to create this one product that integrates the GPS, CD changer, the blue tooth telephone, the trip information and the other 15 things I have not discovered yet. It probably started as one component, which then had to be reworked to integrate the second component and so on. When everything was said and done, we have what I get to use now.

See also the follow up on that post by product management insights.

(Illustration: the product management tips blog)

The organizers of the 2008 From Business To Buttons conference have put video recordings of a considerable number of presentations online, including Donald Norman's 'Cautious Cars and Cantankerous Kitchens' and Patrick Jordan's 'Four Pleasures'. They also provide the opportunity to download the slides of even more presentations. This must be one of the best post-conference sites I have ever seen.

[Found through: The Hot Strudel]

As you may have noticed the design of uselog.com has changed. A change of style (though the orange remained) and pages have been added with usability-related resources, information on my PhD research, and a contact/about page. As no transition is without bumps, the coming weeks I will filter out bugs and optimize the design.

If you have any remarks, please send them to me. (Writing about product usability and then redesigning your website, that's a bit like putting your head on the chopping block, isn't it...)

(Click image to enlarge)

To ring a doorbell at this apartment building you have to key in the apartment number, which consists of two numbers and a non-capitalized letter. The numbers are in the button cluster on the left, the letters are in the cluster on the right. To start making the connection (confirm your choice) you have to push the capital letter E in the button cluster on the left.

One line of buttons per floor would have meant an interface with more buttons, but the mapping would have been more logical. Or at least the clustering of buttons could have been done a little more consistent. But I guess here the added cost of extra buttons was a consideration as well. But I don't think ringing a doorbell should be this hard.