After months of construction the downstairs
lobby in my office building is done. They've gone with a slick minimalist style,
marble and glass. First day it's open I go to use the elevators, there’s
four of them. I hit "up", another person hits "down". An
elevator shows up, dings, and we are confronted with this:
It
appears the light is saying "Hi, I'm here", but refuses to tell us
which way it's going. The stranger and I look at each other with quizzical
looks on our faces. We both decide to take a chance and get on. Elevator starts
going up, the stranger sighs. A few days later, several people are waiting for the elevator, the elevator shows
up, it dings, and then it looks like this:
Ah.. a red light and a white light. So, red is
down (hell?) and white is up (heaven?). A person would have to use the elevators more than
once for it to be blatantly obvious what was going on. Luckily on my second use, the red light appeared. So, in their effort to
be slick and minimalist they violated simple usability rules. They haven't
followed the convention of arrows, something that people are used to. You have
to use the elevator more than once for it to dawn on you that white means up
and red means down. The first time you see the light, there's no context. I've
been observing people's reactions to this high use bank of elevators and as
expected there's a ton of confusion and people getting on the wrong elevators. With
an elevator there should be zero
learning curve.
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