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Comment by pflenker | Hacker News Reader

Because in a busy environment (where consistently more than one person uses the elevator) the scenario of making a wrong decision and having the wish to correct it occurs far less than the scenario where someone does not pay attention to which floors have been selected already and deselects your destination. At the worst case this means that you both miss your stop because you both did not notice.

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Might also get confusing if the LED indicating the button's been pressed stops working

This comment right here is an example of thinking like a good designer. No amount of sleek surfaces and cool lighting can beat this.

Leave the button recessed after it's been selected, even if the LED fails (how often does this actually happen?) it's still a visual and tactile indicator.

To deselect the floor, simply press in again.

Those buttons are expensive and fail relatively quickly. It's a good idea, though.

Remove the buttons entirely and replace with a QRcode/NFC thing where each rider can vote/unvote where he personally wants to go. This can also work outside before the elevator arrives so a routing system can decide to bundle up a bunch of people going to the same floor in one express elevator. Haven't thought out how the ux would look to keep the wrong people out of that one elevator.

Many elevators in tall buildings have you select the floor when you arrive at the elevator bank, then it assigns you an elevator (usually denoted with letters A, B, C, D etc). When that elevator opens you get in (along with other people who were assigned that elevator), and it will stop at your floor (as well as other floors for other people).

Otis has a touch-screen system where you enter the exact destination: https://www.otis.com/documents/256045/11235683/22032_Compass...

> Remove the buttons entirely and replace with a QRcode/NFC thing where each rider can vote/unvote where he personally wants to go.

My local pizza place plays music based on customer voting through a smartphone app. It's not necessary to be there in order to vote - you just need the app.

This elevator design could be fun in similar ways.

Yeah, that's why I added NFC to at least approximate presence.

Now you made the buttons even more complicated, requiring some sort of magnet or motor in addition to a simple LED. And what do you do when that fails?

Also, malicious fighting over selecting and deselecting destinations

Yes, some elevator environments are busy. But many aren't.

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