How to unlock the door?

I have recently arrived in Singapore to study at NUS for semester 2. I am on an exchange from the University of Waterloo, located in Canada. While studying here in S'pore I will be residing in the Prince George Park Residence, where I have encountered multiple episodes of bad design. I will detail one of the episodes below -

How do I open unlock the door of my residence?

When I arrived at my residence at 1:30 am, after 20+ hours of being in an airplane, I had hoped to get the keys to my room and get to bed. This was far from the case, as I encountered numerous obstacles before being able to curl up on my bed.

I received two room keys along with a plastic tag indicating my room/level/block number and a circular, black object (key fob) attached to the key chain.

First impressions - Intuitiveness:

Coming from North America, the black circular object I assumed was a transponder or key card of some sort that usually accompany keys for a condominium. The key card/transponder is used to wave in front of a security point to gain access to a set of doors or restricted areas, as to allow only the tenants of the building to gain access.

Another possibility was that the circular object attached to the keys was an electronic key fob. From first glance it was possible that this key fob would give remote keyless entry as you see becoming standard in the cars available today.

Issues:

The door for my room has its door knob as would normally be seen on any door, but there is also a second knob placed slightly higher than the main door knob.

At first attempts in opening the door, I went to turn the door knob, but it was locked. Any user in this situation from any part of the world would try checking to see if the door is open already and just turn the handle. Since it was locked, I assumed to find the keyhole in which to unlock the door from, however none was to be found.

Next thing I did any user would do, would be to try the 2^nd smaller know above the door. Turning both ways it only kept rotating the knob and nothing would happen. This is where normal means to opening a door would probably end. Being from North America, a key, number pad or card swiping would be the normal conventions used to open a locked door.

Already accustomed to the idea of keyless entry for cars, I opted to try pushing the button on the key fob. Eureka! I heard a beeping sound. Although, my spirits were dampened after attempting to turn the handle for the door/gate. I pressed the button on the fob once again, but this time I tried turning the knob. I had finally solved the puzzle. The lock clicked open and I was able to open the gate with the handle.

Other issues relating to unlocking the door is that, your key fob must be within a half a foot from the 2^nd knob, as there must be some signal being transmit when the button is pushed down. Also the length of time that the button needs to be pressed is longer than a user would assume is necessary to unlock the door.

When locking the door, you must again push the button. I had assumed that after I closed the door, I would only need to turn the 2^nd knob to once lock the door.


Summary and Conclusions:

Even now, when I got to open the door, I make mistakes on where I position the fob, assume the door is unlocked or just make some sort of mistake and I am unable to unlock the door. As a user, you would think that after learning how to unlock the door the first time it would become second nature. However, this was not the case. A bad design is one that even if a design is not intuitive, after learning how to use the device, a user still makes mistakes or is unsure of how to properly use it.

In the case of unlocking my residence door the key fob mechanism is so different and non intuitive from what any North American would ever think to do. I still make the mistake of trying to press the button or turn the handle without thinking to use the button of the key fob first. As I am not sure what is considered the norm here in Singapore or South East Asia for that matter, any user coming from North America will intuitively jump to pressing the button without turning the little knob or just turning the main handle on the door without thinking twice. Especially not having a keyhole on the door will confuse almost anyone for the first few times.