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Previous: Yahoo! Weather forecast | Main | Next: Kleinfeld's ad copy
May 14, 2004 12:01 AM
Broken: Elevator directional signal
Ben Grill writes:
The up and down lights above the elevators in my building aren't very user-friendly. There's no barrier or distance between the green "up" arrow and the red "down" arrow. So when an elevator arrives, it lights up, but you can't tell if it's lighting the down or up arrow. Hence, I spend a small portion of each workday asking people "Is this going up or down?" Take a look at the photo - do you think it's going up... or down?
That could be remedied by a clever maintenance engineer. A small slip of foil, or black plastic inserted between the display's inner bulbs so they don't cross illuminate through each other. There was probably something like that inside there from the manufacturer, but a lazy custodian removed it when replacing the blown lamps, and threw it away because it got in his way.
Is it that way on every floor?
Yes it does matter because you may not be the only one riding the elevator. If you get on an "up" elevator intending to go down, you will be taken for a ride with your fellow passengers who are all going up.
my school has a similar sign, except that it's an Open/Closed sign. the inconvenient spot they put it in is parallel to the direction of the sunlight(i go there in the morning), so i can't tell whether it's open or closed, so then i have to go test the doors
my school has a similar sign, except that it's an Open/Closed sign. the inconvenient spot they put it in is parallel to the direction of the sunlight(i go there in the morning), so i can't tell whether it's open or closed, so then i have to go test the doors. it's really quite annoying.
I frequent a building or two in the O.C. where the lights are side-by-side and both white! Now, that's just silly!
This was an intentional design in order to minimize that waiting time from when the hall button is pushed until the elevator doors open. Elevator traffic performance is calculated based on hall waiting times. By not differentiating between up and down we have successfully handled all the calls more quickly making the system 50% more efficient.
The guys in marketing loved it.
Actually, Dan Metzger at May 18, 2004 has the best answer.
Comments on this entry are closed
Previous: Yahoo! Weather forecast | Main | Next: Kleinfeld's ad copy
I'm going to guess "up" based on the where the light is coming from (the slot inside the brass plate that the arrows live in). It looks like the light is coming from the top half of that slot.
Posted by: Dan at May 14, 2004 11:16 AM