The Elevator Button Problem

> There's nothing to stop you contradicting yourself by indicating a different direction of travel. Which makes you wonder why you had to indicate the direction in the first place.

Elevators in the last few countries I’ve visited had generally refused floor selection that didn’t agree with the call direction.

If no selection in the direction of call is made then they would open again and reset their direction after which you can go in the “wrong direction”, so to speak.

I think the suggested fix by the author is quite poor. If you really want to optimize, have floor selection done outside the elevator. People have to learn to remember which elevator is “theirs”, though.

However switching between those two types does tend to make you forget to make selections.

I’ve seen bizarre lift behaviour, the one that gets me are the people who get in a lift, then don’t select the floor, they just seem to think the lift would take them to the correct one (our company had exclusive use of one floor, so they weren’t going there)

I'm a big fan of the elevator call buttons where you choose your destination upfront.