For this entry I come back to the subject of design yet again.  Carolina, my Interaction Design instructor, asked us students to study the concepts shared by Donald Norman in his book The Design of Everyday Things.  Afterwards, we were supposed to take a look at some everyday object, albeit one that does not possess a screen.  The everyday thing I chose was the left-side freeway off-ramps of Washington state.

So, I presumed this exercise was to help us disconnect just a little bit from our digital ways and see what the overall conceit of good design truly is.  To get just a little personal, I don’t have very much of a design background (which is one of the reasons why I am in the class) but I’m also not much of an engineer.  I do have some history of web design and video game design under my professional belt, though.  But, alas, I am more the beneficiary of good design than the creator.  But, I am also like everyone else the victim of bad design, too.  One thing about me, and it seems to be true of many people, is that we blindly accept loads of bad design and just cope with it despite the flaws.  Norman spells this out in his book.  For example, he talks about the doors of a Boston Hotel that sacrifice simplicity for aesthetics.  How often is this a parallel for our real lives?  We strive for the appearance of perfection rather than internal cohesion and understanding.

Well, I was reading some of the assigned material on the way home from Roseburg, OR, and had along the way discussed some of it with my fellow passengers.  Later in the drive as we entered Washington the conversation in the vehicle turned to the subject of some of the, in this author’s opinion, awkwardly laid-out freeway exit ramps in Washington.  But, I found out I wasn’t alone in my opinion about their awkwardness.  In Washington state there are places on I-5, I-90, and I-405 that have exit ramps that are only accessible from the far-left lane of your side of the highway.  I’m not claiming Washington state has a monopoly on strangely placed off-ramps on their freeways, but it does seem highly suspect.  While the solution to what might have been a problem of available space limitations, that might have forced the potentially regrettable decision to place some ramps in the middle of a highway in order to access the attendant overpass, it still feels counter-intuitive to what perhaps most drivers are accustomed to.  To make matters worse, there are a smattering of on-ramps that deposit the vehicles in the far left lane, too.  Not only does this potentially present a slowing of traffic flow, but it also could be very dangerous.

Traditionally, in the United States you find all ramps to limited-use highways on the right-hand side.  The right lane is then designated as the “slow” lane, or the lane for slower vehicles and vehicles preparing to exit, and the far-left lane is the “fast” lane, where vehicles have already reached the posted speed limit and are proceeding to their destinations at maximum legal safe speed (ahem, in theory).  With ramps on the left side, the traditional make-up is negated.  Slower vehicles, such as tractor-trailers, must sometimes cross all the way over to the left in order to exit, impeding faster moving traffic.  Therefore, it is my opinion, as both a driver in Washington state (and in the interest of full disclosure, a driver that very recently had an accident at one of these left-side exits) and a fledgling student of design wisdom, that these left-hand exits pose a serious risk to drivers, especially those accustomed to freeway lane/speed relationship standards.  Applying Donald Norman’s credo, that good design contains visual clues to operation, one might argue that there is nothing wrong with the left-laying exits, these “everyday things” of the freeway, because you can easily see what their intended use is.  However, Norman also points out that bad design thwarts the process of interpretation and understanding.  You might immediately understand the intention of the suspect ramp, but access becomes a case of entrapment when dealing with criss-crossing speeds and vehicle types.  In that regard, we previously accepted as a society that the left lane is the fast lane, and the right lane is the exit lane.  When you are used to that, then the process of navigating the freeway with left-side ramps gains an extra level of frustration.  This frustration, in my opinion, is enough to qualify these ramps as badly designed things, and I’m sure by Norman’s definition, too.

So, be careful on the freeways of Washington, and avoid life in the fast lane whenever possible.

Oh, bonus fun: study by the Transportation Research Board on left-hand ramps in the Chicago area.  While the findings don’t consistently support my assertions about the left-side danger inherent, except in some instances, it appears to still shed some interesting light on the subject, if you prefer further reading.  You’ll have to contact them for the full text, though.

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