Group Members
Connor Kirschbaum, Stephanie Greene, Joanna Kao
Problem Statement
The goal of this project is to create a more efficient elevator system for 20+ story buildings. The user would like to quickly arrive at their target floor. Obstacles include: the elevator arrival times, people who press buttons of floors they do not intend to go to, elevator capacity, and the number of people who get to ride the elevator first by virtue of the length of their wait or their pushiness, etc.
User Observation and Analysis
We interviewed the following people:
1. Course 12 junior who has many classes on the upper floor of the Green Building
2. Course 8 sophomore who is afraid of elevators
3. Middle aged male who works in a building with 50+ stories.
We also observed people in the following locations:
1. Student Center – two un-synced elevators across from each other serving 5 stories
2. The Green Building – three synced elevators side by side serving 20 stories
3. Building 36 – three synced elevators side by side serving 8 stories
4. McCormick East Tower – one elevator serving 9 stories.
The following are our findings:
1. People get annoyed or scared at the loss of time when they have to stop on many floors before they arrive at their destination.
a. In the Green Building, many course 12 students need to ride the elevator to very high floors. Because the vertical distance between the ground and the first floor (containing 54-100) is so large many students take the elevator to the first floor, not to mention the all the other students and faculty that need to access other floors. The high traffic can make students late to class.
b. People who are claustrophobic/afraid of elevators are especially concerned by this. The more people who enter or exit on earlier floors, the more time such a person has to spend in the elevator.
2. People are annoyed with the lag time caused by people holding the elevator for others on their floor.
a. In McCormick, the elevator makes a distinctive clicking sound when it changes floors. Students were observed electing to walk downstairs, sometimes from floors as high as the 7th when the lack of clicking indicated the elevator had not moved for some time.
3. The constant need to tap an employee ID to enter or exit the elevator was an inconvenience.
a. This slowed everyone down since users had to tap their ID in order to open the elevator doors to prove they had the appropriate permissions to be on the floor. In crowded elevators, it was sometimes difficult to coordinate.
4. In buildings with higher security, employees may only be authorized to visit a certain subset of floors.
a. One person we spoke to had a friend on the 22nd floor. Unfortunately he did not have access to this floor, so every time he wanted to drop by he had to travel all the way down to the first floor to obtain security clearance to travel back up to the 22nd floor.
5. In elevators that service only higher floors, the high velocity ride makes some nauseous.
a. In very high buildings, elevators may be set up to service only a specific subset of floors in an attempt to reduce wait times. Since an elevator won’t need to stop until it reaches the first floor of its set, it can move very quickly at first. This can be a problem for those who are easily nauseated.
b. We interviewed one person who was afraid of elevators, and this was the primary reason for his phobia. He was most afraid of the idea that the elevator was going up, but he couldn’t tell precisely where he was at any given time.
6. The lack of cell service in many elevators was an inconvenience.
a. In McCormick, people were frequently observed to experience dropped calls if they needed to travel more than two floors. Unfortunately, most elevator users need to travel more than this.
b. One person we spoke to works in a very tall building. He often needs to visit other floors and sometimes he needs to continue an important call at the same time. Unfortunately, he cannot do both.
7. Buildings, especially tall buildings, are designed around elevators. In skyscrapers, making elevators even slightly faster or more efficient can have a significant positive effect on the circulation of people in the building.
User Classes
Class 1: Workers (for corporate buildings)
Age: at least 15
Frequency of Use: Daily
Motivation/Attitude: Workers would like to arrive at their floor rapidly. Workers who have to use the system on a daily basis are much more likely to be irritated if the system does not work quickly and as prescribed.
Class 2: Residents (for apartment buildings)
Age: at least 7 to operate alone, any age to use
Frequency of Use: Daily
Motivation/Attitude: While residents would like their elevator to operate efficiently, they are less likely to be in a hurry or to get irritated if the system is slow.
Class 3: Visitors
Age: at least 10 to operate alone, any age to use
Frequency of Use: Rarely
Motivation/Attitude: Visitors would also like to arrive at their floor quickly, but they are far less likely to be bothered if the system works more slowly. Since they do not use the system on a regular basis, they are more likely to be confused if the system operates differently or has a different interface than standard elevators.
The demographics for all user classes are very similar. Users can be either gender, belong to any culture, speak any language, have any level of education, experience any type of physical limitation, and have any level of computer experience.
Task Analysis
1. There will be situations where an elevator is going in the direction that the user wants to go, and maybe even passing their floor, but they should not be getting in the elevator. This will be a learning problem, in that we need to train people to only enter elevators that will be stopping on their floor. It could also be a security problem: how do we prevent someone from getting on an elevator that is headed to the top floor, and just stopping it when they get to their floor (inconveniencing their fellow passengers in the process)?
2. How do we prevent someone who wants to get to the 40th floor from exploiting the system by pressing the buttons for 40, 41, 42, 43, and 44, which would give their floor a high priority and decrease their wait time?
3. One metric that will improve our elevator algorithm is the number of people who wish to go to a particular floor. This presents an interesting interface challenge since we want to make the interface scalable (so it doesn’t look cluttered when used with hundreds of floors) and also make it safe for elevator users — we want to minimize the amount of error that results from confused people
4. One of the big differences between the traditional elevator system and our new system is that users may potentially need to walk further to get to their proper elevator. Therefore, we need to find a way to minimize the number of people rushing through each other to get to their desired elevator and/or maximize the amount of time they have to get to the elevator they need to get in. The safety aspect will be interesting — both from a physical standpoint as well as a design standpoint — since we want to make sure people can start walking to their elevators before it arrives so that they have enough time to make it there and/or walk to another elevator if they get confused (recover from errors). We want this system to be very learnable since many of the people using the system will be first-time users. This should also be efficient so that the entire process is quicker.