Flag

We stand with Ukraine and our team members from Ukraine. Here are ways you can help

Get exclusive access to thought-provoking articles, bonus podcast content, and cutting-edge whitepapers. Become a member of the UX Magazine community today!

Home ›› Accessibility ›› The Entrance Is the Exit … Obviously #wtfUX

The Entrance Is the Exit … Obviously #wtfUX

by John Boykin
4 min read
Share this post on
Tweet
Share
Post
Share
Email
Print

Save

At the Palo Alto Medical Foundation clinic, you might easily find yourself going in through the out door.

The Palo Alto Medical Foundation clinics in Palo Alto and Redwood City, California, are beautiful pieces of architecture. And both campuses confuse the goo out of new visitors trying to find their way around.

A case in point is this signage classic at—well, let’s call it a portal between the Palo Alto clinic’s underground parking garage and the clinic building. Is this an entrance? Yes. Is it an exit? Uhhh, that’s the rub.

Palo Alto Medical Foundation entrance/exit

These contradictory signs have been at this spot since the Palo Alto campus opened around 2000. At the time, I was busy trying to break into the business of designing wayfinding systems. Two friends separately called to say, “The Palo Alto clinic needs wayfinding help. Desperately.” I met with a PAMF administrator, who had shot her budget on beautiful signs and thus had none left to hire me. But she did walk me through the reasons, assumptions, politics, and compromises that had crippled her expensive signs’ ability to communicate.

Here’s the story of the entrance/exit.

The garage was full of exit signs, but any driver who followed one in hopes of finding their way out of the garage quickly came to grief. None of the exit signs pointed to the car ramps out to the street. They all pointed to the clinic building entrances. Drivers were pretty much left to their own devices to find their way out the garage. And visitors walking from their cars toward the building entrances would often halt at this spot, perplexed by exit signs marking an entrance, suddenly unsure whether they were going the right way.

Those exit signs, the administrator explained to me, had been required by the Palo Alto fire marshal. Curious to understand his thinking, I called him up.

The fire marshal explained that, in his view, exiting is not something drivers do. It is something only pedestrians do. Exit signs therefore apply only to pedestrians, not to drivers.

Oh.

If a fire broke out in that underground garage, the fire marshal did not want pedestrians departing it by walking up the car ramps. Instead, he wanted them to depart by walking into the clinic building. The entrance to the building was therefore the exit from the garage. So the many exit signs were not there to show drivers the way out to the street. They were there only to tell pedestrians how best to escape a fire.

Now, I wouldn’t argue with a fire marshal’s judgment about how best to escape a fire. He’s the subject matter expert. But as a UX guy, I would certainly argue with him about how best to communicate directions to the public. His exit signs’ specific and sole purpose was to tell pedestrians how to escape a fire, yet only a few of exit signs clustered around the building entrances (including the one in the center of this photo) go beyond the word “Exit” to give any hint that they apply to either pedestrians or fires.

We’ve all seen a thousand exit signs. They have instilled in us a mental model: “This way out”—not “This way in.” The mental model of clinic patients walking from their cars to their doctors’ offices is that they are entering a building, not that they are exiting a garage. However well meant, labeling an entrance as an exit contradicts that mental model, creating confusion.

Had I gotten the assignment, I would have commended the fire marshal for the signs that do include a silhouette of a pedestrian and flames. I would then have built on that, recommending

  1. one set of signs in color A with a silhouette of a pedestrian, flames, an arrow, and the words “Ped fire exit”
  2. a second set of signs in color B with a silhouette of a car, an arrow, and the words “Auto exit” (or, if the fire marshal wouldn’t budge from his peculiar definition of “exit,” then maybe “To street, auto only”)

I’m happy to say that something vaguely along these lines has evolved in the years since. White “Auto exit” signs now hang overhead near the exit ramps. Most of the other exit signs now include a silhouette of a pedestrian and flames.

Palo Alto Medical Foundation entrance/exit

But these signs at the building entrances remain unchanged since the clinic opened.

Longtime PAMF visitors have gotten used to the place and learned to ignore the conflicting signs. But newcomers still stop and look around, puzzled.

Fire is the ultimate edge case, but helpful signs showing how to escape a fire are essential. Helpful signs. But even signs necessary for the edge case of a fire should not create confusion the other 99.999% of the time.

Regardless of what PAMF may have thought about the signage, the fire marshal could pretty much dictate what the signage had to be. In the tech world, might our own subject matter experts, lawyers, security people, executives, or developers ever force us to inconvenience most of our users most of the time for the sake of an edge case? Would they ever require language that confuses everyone but themselves?

No, that would never happen.

Keep these coming. Send them to us via Twitter or Facebook using the hastag #wtfUX or email them to: [email protected] with “#wtfUX” in the subject line. Include as much context as you can, so we get a full understanding of what the f%*k went wrong.

post authorJohn Boykin

John Boykin
John Boykin answers to user experience designer, information architect, interaction designer, information designer, and UX researcher. He’s been doing all of the above for over 10 years. Clients include Walmart, Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, Blue Shield, Bank of America, Visa, Symantec, NBC, HP, Janus, Prosper, and Mitsubishi Motors. His site, wayfind.com, will tell you more than you want to know.

Tweet
Share
Post
Share
Email
Print

Related Articles

Why does AI call you brilliant — then refuse to tell you why? This article unpacks the paradox of empty praise and the silence that follows when validation really matters.

Article by Bernard Fitzgerald
The AI Praise Paradox
  • The article explores how AI often gives empty compliments instead of real support, and how design choices like that can make people trust it less.
  • It looks at the strange way AI praises fancy-sounding language but ignores real logic, which can be harmful, especially in sensitive areas like mental health.
  • The piece argues that AI needs to be more genuinely helpful and aligned with users to truly empower them.
Share:The AI Praise Paradox
4 min read

Mashed potatoes as a lifestyle brand? When AI starts generating user personas for absurd products — and we start taking them seriously — it’s time to ask if we’ve all lost the plot. This sharp, irreverent critique exposes the real risks of using LLMs as synthetic users in UX research.

Article by Saul Wyner
Have SpudGun, Will Travel: How AI’s Agreeableness Risks Undermining UX Thinking
  • The article explores the growing use of AI-generated personas in UX research and why it’s often a shortcut with serious flaws.
  • It introduces critiques that LLMs are trained to mimic structure, not judgment. When researchers use AI as a stand-in for real users, they risk mistaking coherence for credibility and fantasy for data.
  • The piece argues that AI tools in UX should be assistants, not oracles. Trusting “synthetic users” or AI-conjured feedback risks replacing real insights with confident nonsense.
Share:Have SpudGun, Will Travel: How AI’s Agreeableness Risks Undermining UX Thinking
22 min read

AI is changing the way we design — turning ideas into working prototypes in minutes and blurring the line between designer and developer. What happens when anyone can build?

Article by Jacquelyn Halpern
The Future of Product Design in an AI-Driven World
  • The article shows how AI tools let designers build working prototypes quickly just by using natural language.
  • It explains how AI helps designers take on more technical roles, even without strong coding skills.
  • The piece imagines a future where anyone with an idea can create and test products easily, speeding up innovation for everyone.
Share:The Future of Product Design in an AI-Driven World
4 min read

Join the UX Magazine community!

Stay informed with exclusive content on the intersection of UX, AI agents, and agentic automation—essential reading for future-focused professionals.

Hello!

You're officially a member of the UX Magazine Community.
We're excited to have you with us!

Thank you!

To begin viewing member content, please verify your email.

Tell us about you. Enroll in the course.

    This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Check our privacy policy and