We were at RailsConf in Portland a few weeks ago and were riding the MAX light rail system. The MAX is great! I wish MSP has a system like that. It was really easy to get everywhere we needed to be on the train. It is a normal train with doors on each side of the car. Sometimes the stations were on the left side and sometimes on the right.

The overhead speaker system would announce “The door will be opening to my left”.

…”to my left” is the tricky part. To have this make sense we need to know if the person who is telling us the direction is facing towards us, or is facing forward conducting the train. I assumed that the doors opening to the left would be to the left if you were facing the direction the train was moving.

It turns out that virtual person announcing the door opening was facing towards the passengers. This is so weird that they made a choice that could be left up to interpretation like that. It took me a few stops to figure it out (mostly because by the time the next stop came around I forgot to notice what doors opened).

This is a case where someone was trying to be cleaver, but it was at the expense of usability.