Prototype Photos
#1: Lobby Display: This display is located around the lobby area. On this interface, we have physical buttons on the right ordered from low to high starting in the bottom left going towards the upper right (mirroring traditional elevator buttons inside elevators. We also have a touch screen on the bottom right where users can write the floor they want to get to. Above the touch screen is a map that shows which elevator a user should go towards to get to their floor.
#2: Display above elevator: One of these displays is located above each elevator. For each floor an elevator has in its queue, the corresponding button above the elevator is lit up. To the right of the buttons, the floors in the queue are listed. To the left of the buttons, the estimated time until the elevator arrives is displayed.
#3: Display inside elevator: Inside the elevator, the floors the elevator will stop at are listed. Beside the closest floor in the queue, the ETA is displayed. A physical emergency exit button is located beneath the screen, and will stop the elevator at the nearest floor (even one not in the queue).
Briefing
We created a new elevator interface. We’re going to walk you through a few scenarios and look at how users will interact with our new interface. If you want to stop at any point in time, just let us know. Imagine you’ve just walked into a high-rise building that has 50 floors. You walk into the lobby, and there are 6 elevators — 3 on the left and 3 on the right. You see this display (show interface of main lobby display). This display is found on every floor.
Scenario Tasks
Task 1:
The user must figure out how to use the lobby floor select interface (Figure 1) to indicate the floor they would like to access.
Task 2:
The user must find the elevator that will take them to their desired floor given the information displayed on the lobby floor select interface (Figure 2) and the interface above the elevators (Figure 2).
Task 3:
The user was asked to interpret the information displayed on the interface above the elevator (Figure 2).
Task 4:
Another person in the elevator has a panic attack. The user is asked how they would deal with the situation. The idea was to see how they would react and how they would utilize the interface to achieve what they wanted to do.
Task 5:
In task 4, most users elected to use the emergency exit button. If they chose this option, the elevator would be temporarily out of service. They had to figure out how to get back to their original target floor.
Observations
Button order:
The low-to-high button order on the outside panel, which is implemented in virtually all existing elevators, confused some of our users. 2/6 of our users asked us why the buttons started at the top of the panel instead of the bottom, and it took them several seconds to locate their button.
ETA:
The screen inside the elevator which displayed an estimated time to arrival wasn’t clear enough for some users; they weren’t able to identify what the screen displayed, despite the “ETA” label. A clearer label might help.
Emergency stop button:
When one of our users had to deal with a medical emergency, she wasn’t sure whether to press the emergency exit button, or to try and contact the police immediately. She also noted that it would be best in some emergency situations to travel express to the first floor, rather than to exit at the closest floor.
Confusing lack of inside buttons:
When one of our users got into the elevator, she looked for buttons on the wall, and didn’t know what to do when she didn’t find them. This was even after she had pressed the button for her floor in the lobby.
Claustrophobic:
One user felt uncomfortable not knowing what floor she was currently on, said she felt “trapped.”
Emergency exit details:
Most users were able to get the elevator to stop in a medical emergency, but were confused at what to do next. When does the elevator start again? Will it remember the floors it had previously been headed to?
Map confusion:
The function of the map was unclear to two of our users. They didn’t understand what the points on the map represented.
Prototype Iteration
Express Option:
One of our users was uncertain whether to press the emergency exit button to deal with a medical emergency because she didn’t think it would be a good idea to exit the elevator. She wanted to return to the lobby as quickly as possible. We hadn’t previously mentioned to the users that we would continue to include the callbox in our elevators. We also chose to include a system in the lobby for building officials to override the floor delegation algorithm to force one elevator to become an express to a particular floor.
Reversed Floor Order Inside Elevator:
Some users were confused by the descending floor numbers inside the elevator when the two outside interfaces both had ascending floor numbers. We agreed this might be confusing and reversed the order.
Buttons:
We realized the lobby interface (Figure 1) on every floor in the elevator’s path should display all subsequent floors the elevator will visit as available floors. For example, if the elevator is starting at the first floor and visiting floors four, nine, and ten, the lobby interface on floor four should display floors nine and ten as floors the elevator will visit and the interface on floor nine should display floor ten. This is a behavior the system should have had from the beginning to optimize use for large numbers of people, but one that was not initially included since we had never tested with more than one user, so the interfaces the user was not viewing were not considered as thoroughly.
Write Out ETA:
Some users were initially a little confused by “ETA” and said it would be easier to understand if we wrote Estimated Time of Arrival instead.
Labeling the Map:
Some users did not initially understand what the map was. Although all agreed that it would be easier to understand if they were standing in a lobby with a corresponding layout, most also thought we should label the map somehow.