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Elevator Usability

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
November 15th, 2007
Posted In:
Design
Comments:
2 Responses, Join The Conversation.

Elevator Number PadIn my mind there is nothing more usable than an elevator, it’s amazingly simple. The doors open, you walk in and you push the button of the floor you’d like to go to. You wait for the doors to open on your floor and you walk off, easy. If you’d like to keep the doors open for a bit longer you press the door open button, if you’d like the doors to close faster because you’re in a rush just press the door close button. The button beeps and lights up to let you know you’ve pressed it, it’s perfect.

Even with all of these amazing usability features, 90% of people still manage to screw it up when getting off of the elevator. I live on the third floor, almost at the bottom but still 2 floors away. Whenever I want to go down, the elevator stops and people start getting off on my floor, even though they don’t intend to, they intend to get off on the ground floor.

There are 4 indications that you’ve arrived on your floor:

  1. The display inside the elevator shows the number of the floor you’re on.
  2. The light on the button you used to select your floor turns off.
  3. The floor number is on the wall when the doors open.
  4. And if you’re going to the main lobby it looks totally different than any other floor

The elevator designers have given people these 4 very obvious indications of what floor they are on and they still ignore them almost every time I hail the elevator.

This just goes to show that no matter how hard you try to make something easy to use, people can still ignore your hard work, get off on the wrong floor, walk too far out on the wrong floor, and have to keep walking and hail another elevator because they’re afraid of looking stupid.

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Comments

  1. kat Says:
    November 16th, 2007 at 9:49 am

    “And if you’re going to the main lobby it looks totally different than any other floor”

    HAHAHAHA - wow. Sooo true.

    I’ve seen two examples of extremely poor elevator usability - NO ONE thought these out:

    1. In Justin’s building (across from the Toronto Star), there is a floor called G, GH and M, next to each other in the list. Which one is the lobby/main floor/ground?? They all appear to have equal importance in the list.

    2. In the Paramount underground parking lot, P1, P2, P3, G and M are NEXT to each other instead of above/below each other. So you have to count from left (or right) to know which button goes with which floor. They should be stacked on top of one another.

  2. Lyndsey Says:
    November 19th, 2007 at 9:26 am

    i was on an elevator on thursday that dropped. It probably only dropped a floor or two, but still i thought i was going to die. I nearly cried.

    Speaking of usability, do you have any good books I could borrow on the subject?

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