“IN USE” sign debate? Jul 15 2010
13 comments Latest by Paul
Comment from John on the “Office: Details” post:
I wonder how many design sessions were spent on the wording of the “IN USE” sign.
“At first, we had ‘BUSY’. It was ok but it didn’t feel quite right. What if David is in there slacking off, for example? It’s no ‘busy’. So, I went to use Draft [link] and posted the following on Campfire [link]: ‘OCCUPIED’ It was the right meaning this time, but it sounded shitty, like it was an airport bathroom. In the end, Ryan suggested ‘IN USE ’. It just clicked: simple, the right meaning, short and to the point. Perfect.”
Haha. Well played.
Here’s how it would have gone…
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13 comments so far
bob 15 Jul 10
‘In use’ is a commonly used term for this type of signage. Why highlight a design process that doesn’t reuse patterns that currently exist and work well.
Jose 15 Jul 10
Someone didn’t get the joke…
Conquering Horde 15 Jul 10
To spotlight their iPhone app? :)
mikhailov 15 Jul 10
it’s about new IT slang, I like it
Matt 15 Jul 10
How about taking this one level further…instead of MAKING A DECISION and getting realer than real with this signage – you bump up the office budget by about 500 bills, and mount an ipad to the wall where that sign would go.
BAM !, we’ve future proofed against changing signage prefs.
Kevin 15 Jul 10
Are you kidding?
jason 15 Jul 10
LOL well played indeed. And I gotta agree, the first person who does an in-wall iPad installation gets a free biscuit.
Richard 15 Jul 10
“On Air” would be great.
Buck 15 Jul 10
But “In Use” says nothing about the type of usage. Now if we could add LED color, to represent the intensity of the current use, say, red for heavy work, blue for laid back, black for not at all, all controlled by a dimmer switch…that would be sweet.
No charge, you’re welcome, talk amongst yourselves.
manuel 15 Jul 10
For very heavy work, you could change IN USE to STAY AWAY , hehe.
EH 16 Jul 10
Sharpie nib isn’t wide enough.
Michi 16 Jul 10
Everyone knows it’s more like ‘I NUSE ’ hahaha
Paul 19 Jul 10
@Richard – “On Air” is spot on! :))
Comments are closed