Going Up? : Of Interfaces and Elevators

I will be teaching a class on information visualization this summer at Harrisburg University. Last evening I attended a faculty get together at the school. Something I had noted each time I have been there combined with a project I have been thinking about all day and the result is this post. It has nothing to do with information visualization, Harrisburg University itself, teaching strategies, or anything of that nature (well at least not yet). It has to do with elevators.

I am sure that everyone has a clear and unambiguous idea of how to ride an elevator, but allow me to state that explicitly here. You walk into an office building. If necessary, you exchange pleasantries with the security folks. You are directed to the elevator bank, where you push a button on the wall to get an elevator. If necessary, you wait, and then when the doors open you get on. You select a floor, then get off as appropriate.

Except here there are no buttons on the wall. There are two banks of elevators on opposite walls. There is a podium like device in the middle of the floor, between both elevator banks, and it is used not only to summon an elevator, but to specify the floor that you want. The device then tells you which elevator you will be taking. When you get on the elevator there are no buttons to select a floor, you just go where you said you wanted to go.

So, the first thing that needs to be said is that this system works flawlessly, at least on every occasion that I have been there. I got on, elevated (or descended), and then got off. So why am I writing about it?

Because it feels odd. (is is appropriate to discuss an elevator interface as potentially "intuitive"?- is this something we can grasp?) If I were feeling philosophical I might describe it as an especially deterministic mode of travel. One cannot get on the elevator and decide, spontaneously, that some task on a different floor had been momentarily forgotten, with a quick button push all that was needed to correct the oversight. You WILL go where you said you wanted to go. Then there is the actual ride, which if taken in solitude gives one the opportunity to note the lack of any floor-select buttons, which I find somehow constricting. What if I needed to get off before I get where I'm going? Yes, I probably never would, but the lack of that ability discords.

An aside: I had a very chic phone in the kitchen. It was brushed stainless steel (actually brushed stainless plastic) in the shape of an old style wall phone. The touch tone buttons were shaped like an old rotary dial. It looked very stylish, but I couldn't use it to call people very easily. All my numbers had been stored internally in geometric patterns – the round shape made me stop and think explicitly about what number I was calling. It slowed me down and it was very annoying. Again, the thing worked perfectly, it was just odd.

So, what does this have to do with training?

I have been reviewing a large number of web based modules for a class I am working on. I have seen a large number of interfaces of late. Some are better, some are worse. The interesting ones are those that are consciously attempting to be better, but like the elevators at Harrisburg University, have not prepared me for their improvement, and which conflict with my user expectations. They lead me to ponder the differences between progress and status quo, expectation and innovation. And how to quantify intuition.