I changed offices at work two weeks ago, and it highlighted a wordlessness that I find confusing. My new office is in an older section of the hospital. This means that when you get on the elevator there are two buttons that say "Door Open" and "Door Closed." This is in stark contrast to the buttons on the elevators in the new section of the hospital, that say "<||>" and ">||<"
I'm sorry to say that it takes me more than a few seconds to figure out what these pictures mean. Every time I get on the elevator I have to stare at them for a few seconds to figure out which is which. They are confusing. A while back I pushed the button I thought would hold the door open for someone and ended up closing it in their face. Now I usually stick my hand in the doorway and hope the door opens. Or do nothing.
Moving also showed me another way that wordlessness makes things confusing...
We got new phones a while ago, but my old office had both a new phone and an old phone. Since the old phone was "where the phone should be" on my desk, I kept using it. The old phone had buttons saying "Transfer" "Conference" "Hold" etc. My new office only has the new phone. This phone is a really sophisticated piece of technology, which is obvious because you can customize the ring tone. What confuses me about the phone is that the buttons have a bunch of meaningless pictures on them. Even though I had a two hour inservice on how to use the new phone, and I have a quick reference guide (somewhere in my moved stuff), I have no idea what the wordless buttons on my phone do. The pictures are indecipherable.
Today I got a phone call from an agency looking to refer a patient to the hospital. The number they were trying to call is one digit different from my extension. I politely gave the caller the correct number before attempting to transfer the call. I warned her that I might lose the call, because I had no idea what the buttons on my phone did. She laughed and said she understood, because she didn't understand the buttons on her phone either.
I realize that the intent of wordlessness is to create an environment that doesn't discriminate against people who can't read English. The problem is that the solution discriminates against people who can't understand the icons. Which might be everyone.
The elevator example is probably my own mental block against figuring out what the icons mean. They're pretty obvious, just hard to read quickly. The choices for icons on the phone, however, are really tough to figure out. Other than the envelope icon (clearly voice mail, at least to someone who grew up with real mail), the button to transfer a call and the button for a conference call both include an arrow and a person. I'm not quite sure which is which.
In order to cope with this wordlessness, I may have to make some labels with real words and and tape them to my phone, so I know what each button does.
I have no idea how I'll ever figure out the elevator buttons. I guess I'll just have to stand and wait for the doors to do their thing.
Wordlessly.
