As engineers, we encounter great (and poor) design choices via our consumption of APIs. Something that has well-chosen public interfaces can be a pleasure to use. At the very least, it does its job without calling attention to itself and allows us to move on with our day. A door is a great metaphor for this. Using a well-designed door isn't going to change your life; it's nothing to write home about. But a poorly-designed one can make someone want to pull their hair out, as is evident from the video. That pain is something engineers are acutely sensitive to as a result of using other peoples' APIs on a daily basis, so we're more prone to need to vent our frustration.
In addition, I once read (I forget where, maybe it was a Paul Graham essay) that part of the mentality of a programmer is the idea that we're lazy. In the sense that we're happy to spend a larger-than-usual amount of effort up-front to solve a problem, if doing so will mean we'll save time, effort, and energy in perpetuity which will more than offset the up-front cost of those things. I think the above comes into play for me when I encounter a Norman door. When I think about how easy it would be to solve the issue (remove the handle from the side on which you're meant to push), and the sum total of all the people day-in and day-out who are having the same problem as me with this door, it's mind-boggling that the door would have been designed this way in the first place. It indicates that whoever designed it saw their primary concern as being aesthetic in nature, as opposed to practical. To me, that's shirking one's responsibility as a designer. As Steve Jobs said[1], "Design is how it works."
In addition, I once read (I forget where, maybe it was a Paul Graham essay) that part of the mentality of a programmer is the idea that we're lazy. In the sense that we're happy to spend a larger-than-usual amount of effort up-front to solve a problem, if doing so will mean we'll save time, effort, and energy in perpetuity which will more than offset the up-front cost of those things. I think the above comes into play for me when I encounter a Norman door. When I think about how easy it would be to solve the issue (remove the handle from the side on which you're meant to push), and the sum total of all the people day-in and day-out who are having the same problem as me with this door, it's mind-boggling that the door would have been designed this way in the first place. It indicates that whoever designed it saw their primary concern as being aesthetic in nature, as opposed to practical. To me, that's shirking one's responsibility as a designer. As Steve Jobs said[1], "Design is how it works."
1. https://quotesondesign.com/steve-jobs/