This article is why good user interfaces are critical.
I'm all for getting everyone to their floors a few seconds faster, but a system flaw that misleads people into getting off on the wrong floor is far worse than a system that fails to save those few seconds.
"When our building opened, people kept getting off on the wrong floor because the elevator didn’t tell you which floor it was. Traditional elevators tell you where you are by lighting up each floor number as you reach it, but this elevator didn’t bother. It simply listed the next stops it was making. If it was stopping at floors 4 and 7, when the doors opened at the 4th floor, the electronic sign above the elevator doors would be displaying 7 - and people going to the 7th floor would see it and get off. It took months before engineers finally added a feature to the sign showing which floor the elevator was on."
Posted by Matt Bruce at December 23, 2007 11:01 PM