What I Learned By Designing a Trash Can
The designed world is read at a level way below language, largely on autopilot.
A long, long time ago at my first job as a designer I worked on a project for the Student Union at the University of Oregon called 50 for 5,000. It was a contest put on by the food services group to solicit ideas that could reduce waste by 5,000 paper cups a year. The best idea (judged by … someone?) won 50 bucks and a special mug they would be able to refill for free for a year. I designed a neat poster, a website to solicit ideas, the special mug, and a trash can.
And oh what a trash can it was. I don’t think I still have any photos of it, but it was beautiful. A fresh white 50 gallon hefty made trash can with pink and brown signage, a hole cut in the top just the right size for paper coffee cups, and the best part was the lid was covered in a thick, luscious layer of fresh green sod. A lawn sign was stuck in the top explaining the whole thing. This is a trash can for coffee cups! They will all get recycled! We’ll count the coffee cups and see how many get thrown away over the course of the month! I loved this trash can, and carefully watered it twice a week to keep the grass thriving. To this day it’s still one of my favorite designed objects I’ve made.
And it absolutely, completely, undoubtedly failed to work at all.
Some people put coffee cups in it. More people put … whatever in it. Anything. Everything. Compost, trash, paper. Some people didn’t put anything in it. I would watch people - with empty coffee cups in hand! - walk right up to it, stare at it, then throw their coffee cups in the regular trash can nearby.
I was obviously pretty upset about this. My trash can was awesome, it was fun and beautiful and thoughtful. I added more signage, figuring that would help. It didn’t.
We took it away after the month, composted that beautiful sod lawn top, and stashed the bin somewhere in the depths of the back halls of the Union. It’s probably still floating around somewhere. The lesson I learned at the time was an uncharitable one - “people don’t read”.
This hypothesis has been broadly substantiated over the years I’ve been designing and writing things for people. They, by and large, won’t read whatever helpful signage or documentation you’ve written for them and will invariable use your thing incorrectly and it will drive you mad.
This hypothesis is wrong tho. People do read. They just don’t always read what’s written down.
Instead, people read the broader context of what they see, what they feel, and what they need. Instead of a sign or symbol, people read the space and the moment. If you are a student on your way to class and you have something in your hand you don’t want in your hand you will put that into any hole, bin, or basket that reads like a likely place for it to go. You put your dishes in the bus tub if you can see one, maybe your silverware with the other silverware. A big blue bin gets paper and cardboard because big blue bin reads as a place for paper and cardboard. Like goes with like, stuff goes in bin, thing in hand goes away and the problem is solved. Do we stop and read the words when reading the room solves the problem? Not usually. I even do this today - I had an empty beer can in my hand at a festival and didn’t want it in my hand. Had to put it in something! A handy trash can presented itself and in it went. Later the organizers reminded everyone that those trash cans are for the reusable water cups only which they say on top in big clear letters. Oops.
This is why we pull on push doors and push on pull doors. This is why we don’t read Ikea instructions. Instead we read the street and the building, we read the wrench and the board and the bolt. “Affordances” are a way of trying to write instructions at the broader level - instructions that have a chance of being read - but every instruction is connected to its larger context, which is connected to its larger context, again and again and on and on. We all navigate the world on instructions, semiotics, symbols and affordance lead by our problems and our needs, steered by our wants and dislikes. It’s amazing anything ever gets used as intended, but then we’re pretty good at this.
People didn’t have any way to read my object by context - it didn’t fit into the world in a way that solved the problem it meant to. But it did solve the problem - as it were - at hand. Things that get used as unintended can just go along with the flow. The street finds its own use for a thing.
After all, I made a pretty neat trash can.