ryan behrman

A few months ago I came across this signboard in Bank Station. I took a photo of it as an example of poor signage (in web parlance that would translate to poor information architecture, poor usability and poor accessibility) and I put the photo up on flickr.com. I didn’t know what the missing sign on the left was meant to be, but I knew I wasn’t happy with the “down stairwell” sign on the right (it’s ambiguous to say the least). As web developers we spend so much time making our sites as usable as possible, so why is the physical world so unusable? After all, it’s a lot older than the web!

Well it’s taken them a few months but the guys at London Underground have taken note and have done something about it as the following picture shows..

But I still would get rid of the “down stairwell” sign and leave just the “keep left” sign. Or even better, I’d stick a “no entry” sign on the right, and a vertical arrow on the left.

Perhaps the recent surge in interest surrounding web usability, user-centered design, and the user experience with regards to web applications is forcing web design best practice to converge to the point where such obvious errors are immediately apparent. Whilst web design is improving, there is still a long way to go and we can’t feel smug just yet, but I can’t help thinking that in its brief history we can learn a lot from web design and translate some of that best practice into the physical world.
Hopefully there will be a third picture in the series in the not-too-distant future.