DITW 06: Barriers and Bottlenecks
Image taken of a broken gate behind a popular cafe in Columbus, OH
Design in the World is a series of interesting moments and reflections on how design has an impact on making the world easier or harder to navigate.
Breaking down barriers
It’s interesting how things in the world guide us and our movement. Barriers like walls and fences are typically built to contain something and thus constrain visibility, movement, among other things. Barriers can be protective, such as the walls of a building or the skin of an orange protecting what’s inside from the external environment. The material that a barrier is made of is particularly important when considering its ability to withstand its environment (i.e. durability). You won’t find a bank vault made out of wood. Those extremely compressed molecules are steel, which are difficult to pull apart and break. Barriers aren’t just tangible, but can be intangible as well. Cultural barriers can prevent two people from connecting meaningfully. A firewall or MFA prevent unauthorized access to data within a server. Barriers-to-entry prevent businesses from being able to enter markets for reasons like supply chain cost. No matter the barrier type, they are there for a reason, and if they are obstructing someone from reaching their goal, a barrier may change to a point of entry when enough stress is applied to it.
While living in Columbus there was a popular coffee shop called Fox in the Snow that was nearby us. Behind Fox in the Snow was a large fence which blocked off residential foot-traffic. People who wanted to access the cafe from that residential area needed to basically walk a couple of extra blocks to reach the entrance. One day someone hit said fence with their car, knocking the fence down a bit. People started using that broken fence as a way to enter and exit the cafe, saving them time and effort while working around the intended system. The fence was eventually repaired and people ended up having to go back around it like usual. It was an interesting example of how barriers like that fence can be used to control a system, and how the stock flowing through a system will change based on the constraints placed upon it.
Similar to constraints, designers can use barriers to help guide behavior by removing or limiting access to something within a system. Though, by constraining movement with barriers, systems can consequentially become prone to bottlenecks. When a lot of stock flowing through a system must follow the same path with limited capacity (think RTA or subway ticketing turnstyles, or amusement park lines), stock can build up on one side of a system, allowing only so much to exit through the other side- over-loading the system. On the other side of the coin, barriers can also be used to keep stock within a system, preventing that stock from entering other unintended systems. As designers, we have the opportunity to control systems in a number of different ways, and to intentionally limit paths that businesses, customers, or regular people take through systems through use of tools like barriers. We have the responsibility to make sure that those barriers are durable, or flexible enough, depending on the context. As designers, understanding where barriers can be broken, or implemented to protect or guide, is up to you.