​Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash
10,000 Floor Elevator Interface
Sketches and Wireframes
Designing an elevator interface to serve a futuristic elevator.
Roles: UX Designer
Duration: March - April 2021
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Challenge
A 10,000 floor building seems futuristic, but getting users to the floor of their choice is the goal. I sketched ideas for the elevator interface, utilize accessibility features and integration with smart phones and lobby keypad.
Project Goals
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Quickly develop ideas through sketching.
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Address how users will interact with the interface and their needs including accessibility, language, smart device integration and lobby station.
Design Process
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Sketch an initial 10 designs for a control interface for a 10,000 floor elevator.
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After review, create another 10 sketches, establish a set of criteria (characteristics of a design solution) and a set of constraints (factors that limit what design solutions would work).
Whew! It's time to get the worst idea out of the way.
How about larger buttons with a speaker for accessibility?
Simplify the lobby keypad for a fast scanning by users to find their destination in the building.
What about an electronic keypad to search by name?
I was thinking large buttons with icons for easy understanding.
The phone app would help users find their destination ahead of time and walk up to a lobby keypad and scan their phone.
Design Process
I sketched initial paper wireframes for the control interface including the worst idea (ever). I struggled with how to make the interface simple yet understandable to different riders.
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*Lesson Learned: Don't be afraid to start, no idea is perfect. I found my ideas petered out around ten sketches.
Design Phase
Using Criteria and Constraints to Create Solutions
Based on feedback from peers and rethinking my earlier designs, I developed criteria and constraints to guide my next ten wireframe designs. From these criteria/constraints, I developed low-fidelity wireframes.
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*Lesson Learned: Writing each criteria and constraint helped me focus on key items to include and to go for simpler designs in my sketches.
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Criteria - Simplifying Choices
Make it simple and easy to understand and larger buttons or through easy-to-read graphics that anyone in any language or ability could understand.
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Constraint - Elevator Grouping
As with building with many floors, elevators are grouped by the floors they serve such as text “This Elevator serves floors 1 – 1,000.” I envisioned 10 different elevators but that may not be possible in a building design.
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Criteria - Accessibility
I tried to account for diverse needs whether someone could touch the button, have the pad or a speaker down lower, braille on the numbers or a voice activated system to speak the floor they wanted. The elevator would also speak out each floor as it stopped.
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Criteria – Language
I thought about notating the choice of languages by a flag symbol. The elevator could call out the floor and time in the languages chosen for that particular ride or in English and the chosen language. The languages could be limited to a few choices.
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Constraint - Phone App or Scan Cards
I thought about if there was a building app or scan card which employees or others could use to hold up to a scanner either as they go to a pad in the lobby or in the elevator itself and hold up the app or their card.
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Constraint - Lobby Pads
These could be located outside of that elevator or in the lobby. I didn’t create lobby pads in my first set of designs. There would need to be multiple pads at various locations in the lobby as well as accessible ones.
