The worst user interface you’ve ever seen . . .

It’s arcane. It’s insane. Tucked away inside of a bathroom in a Baltimore area federal building is the worst user interface I’ve ever seen. It happens to be the user interface for a door lock.

Some of the more tragicomic features of the design:

• It utterly shatters the users’ expectations of how to lock a door
• It utterly shatters the users’ expectations of how to use a light switch
• I hope nobody with a visual impairment uses this bathroom
• I hope nobody with low reading skills uses this bathroom
• I hope no unobservant people use this bathroom
• Easily anticipated user behavior (forgetting to turn off the switch) leads to a big problem (unusable bathroom)
• If the problem occurs, the directions for how to resolve it will be locked inside the bathroom, safe from those who need them
• The “Locked” position is designated with a sticker that is obviously soon to peel off

You can’t make this stuff up . . .