Elevator Interface

(Post for the week of 11/08/10)

This last week I was able to go to New York City for a job interview. In the building of the business I was interviewing at I was struck by a new (to me) way to interact with elevators. On the ground floor there was a metal post sticking out of the ground. The post was a little thinner than a phone line pole. It had 4 faces. One one face there was a screen and a set of buttons (exactly like a pay phone, the digits 1 through 9 in a 3x3 grid with 0 centered at the bottom). As I looked at it, a man in a suit walked up and punched in a floor number 43 on the keypad. After about a second the letter F flashed on the screen and he headed off. This drew my attention to the actual elevators. There were 4 elevators on each side of the hall, each with a letter of the alphabet above it. Perhaps not surprisingly the well dressed man was now in front of the one labeled L. Getting the gist I entered my floor number and headed to the appropriate elevator. There was no up down buttons next to the elevator. When the door opened I could see a panel on the inside with the numbers of the floors it was shortly departing to.

Reflecting on this, I think this system was pretty easy to learn. I watched one person and could figure it out. I reckon this system helps improve elevator efficiency. It required a bit more thinking on each user's part (remember which alphabet letter to go to). But there was no need for any buttons inside the elevators.