After writing recently about managing the adoption of a new type of elevator UI, I found a particularly bad implementation of the norm at my hotel in Austin last weekend.
Unusually, there are two elevators on either side of two rooms.
Beside each elevator is this cautionary/alarmist admonishment:
“This button” refers to “these buttons – those ones down there” despite the horizontal arrow. But we can probably figure that out. The reason for this sign – an obvious afterthought is that there’s no place where you can stand and easily see both elevators at once. You must approach one elevator to press the button, and if you stand there and wait, you are likely to miss the arrival of the elevator if it doesn’t come to that door. There is a standard solution: a light near each elevator door that lights up just before the elevator arrives and the door opens. But (other than in the hotel lobby) they’ve neglected that and instead the hotel guest must be “alert” when doing a basic task like trying to get down for breakfast.
This is a well-known and long-solved situation; why the builders would choose to put the elevators around two rooms and then create such a poor experience would be interesting to explore. What were the design and other decision processes that led to this sub-optimal solution?
Tags: austin, builder, button, decision, elevator, hotel, post-design, process, signs, solution, springhill suites, texas, UI
in Hong Kong, some elevators have the un-click feature for the floor buttons.
Comment by b 10.11.10 @ 10:26 pmWe are talking about buildings +40 floors, with +15 people inside each elevator at a time; if someone clicks the wrong floor, it is possible to un-click it, so you don’t waste other passenger’s time with your failure.
What a great idea: error recovery. I wonder if it’s indirectly a result of PCs in terms of how those types of interactions have raised awareness of what’s possible or useful – both for users and designers…
Comment by Steve Portigal 10.12.10 @ 8:57 amSome elevators use some sort of chime to indicate which one has arrived. I guess that would drive the occupants of the adjacent rooms crazy in this context though…
Comment by Martin Polley 10.12.10 @ 12:18 amA different chime? They could have used audio cues (directional, tonal), but I *think* that they didn’t chime too loud if at all, as you suggest.
Comment by Steve Portigal 10.12.10 @ 8:58 amActually, the ones I know use the same chime, but it’s easy enough for someone with normal hearing to discern which elevator the sound is coming from.
Comment by Martin Polley 10.12.10 @ 10:58 amA related problem in a Kyoto boutique hotel: two elevators with two different call buttons. However, there was nothing to indicate how close the elevators were to your floor, or if they were coming at all. The logical response of most people (including myself) was to push BOTH call buttons. The elevators would inevitably stop several times during any given trip and open to a floor at which no one was waiting – because the other elevator had already come. I believe the original intent was to allow people to call the handicapped-accessible elevator separately. The unintended consequence was frustration for everybody!
Comment by Anthony Alvarez 10.12.10 @ 6:50 amGreat example. Reminds me of a hotel in Universal City (LA) where the advice from the front desk was to call the elevator for both up and down; there was some bug where it just would NEVER come – you’d wait for it to happen to land on your floor to deposit someone else; I think it might have been one direction that was broken so they had this workaround that you could learn about, if you happened to have the right interaction. Supposedly this was better than just getting the darn thing fixed?
Comment by Steve Portigal 10.12.10 @ 9:01 am[...] earlier posts on elevators can be found here and here, and on airplanes [...]
Pingback by All This ChittahChattah | More on airplanes and elevators 10.15.10 @ 3:30 pm[...] took umbrage over ridiculous user experiences from United Airlines, airplanes and elevators, hotel elevators, conference badge design, a cupcake store, Lenovo, and a shaver out-of-the-box [...]
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