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With most all elevators, the open door button fails at times to deliver the right message. It looks kind of like this: <> And the close door button looks like this: >< Sometimes when I'm faced with such buttons and I want to open the closing door to let someone else on, I have to pause, unsure
which button does which, and then its too late. Whats worse, by pressing the wrong button, I seem to be going out of my way to slam the door on a hapless stranger. So I propose better icons. Perhaps images of traditional hinged doors, one propped open and the other closed shut.
Push Pull Pictogram
http://www.halfbake..._2fPull_20Pictogram sorta like this? [FarmerJohn, Oct 17 2004]
Stop feeling guilty about shutting people out...
http://www.careerjo...030117-cubicle.html ... 'cause you can't. Its a fake button. [nilstycho, Oct 17 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
[link]
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...or even just have the words
"Open" and "Close" on the buttons. |
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The reason most of us pause when trying to open the door for a latecomer is that the buttons are in different places in every elevator. If you really want to do the world a favor, develop a full standard elevator interface, not just button icons. |
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I agree, those "<>" and "><" symbols are completely unintuitive. I don't know how they caught on. "><" looks much more open than closed. |
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a plus for the idea and [hippo]'s annotation. While we're at it, just get rid of all symbols on the remotes and replace with words. It's unlikely that the words would ever by misunderstood. |
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Even something as simple as: |
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____||_____ for closed, and |
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|_________| for open would be better. |
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With severed bloody arms laying outside the shut door. |
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I often see elevators with "open doors" and "close doors" written on the buttons. |
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If you want to close the doors, don't sweat it. You can't. |
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If you want to keep the doors open, don't waste milliseconds figuring out which is which: punch both at once. |
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DrC: ISO standard elevator? |
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"This elevator is ISO 314159265 compliant. Is yours?" |
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Perhaps, if the buttons were color coded, it might be easier. Red - Close; Green - Open
</with apologies to colorblind folks> |
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The button should be like miniature elevator doors, two slides, a knob on each, over a recess a three dimensional icon. They would mimic the state of the real doors and could be pushed open, held open or pushed shut with one hand. |
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The Open Door button should have a flashing back light when the door enters the the close squence, and the Close Door button should take coins: "Here's a quarter, now step on it!" |
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i think we should all take the stairs and get some excercise becuase we all spend far to much time in front of our PCs anyway... |
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[Rods]'s idea is very interesting! However, the "change doors" symbol should be similar to the "emergency stop" symbol, for maximum effectiveness. |
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The problem with [Rods] idea is
that you generally want to press
the "Open" button when the doors
are about half-closed, which is
precisely when the meaning of the
button switches from "Close" to
"Open" and might be
indeterminable. |
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Nuh-huh! If the doors are clos*ing* then the button would mean open them (and retain that meaning for a few seconds). |
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OTOH, why not use the "minimize" and "maximize" symbols like in the title bar of a Windows window? |
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I don't see everyone's problem. Arrows generally indicate direction of motion. Two arrows coming together, closing. Two arrows pointing away, opening. Would people prefer tails on arrows?
--> <--
<-- -->
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I agree, arrows indicate direction of motion. But "<>" and "><" don't look like arrows to me; they look like pictures; pictures of the opposite of what they are supposed to represent. |
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do we really need a close button? just engineer the thing such that close times are reasonable. i use the world's most popular electric vehicle daily, and i've yet to hit the close button once on my fujitec model. |
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as for open.. it could be represented by an empty circle (like an open cave), and if you must have a close button for some really badly designed model, use a filled-in circle. |
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afterthought: i've yet to see an elevator the senses approaching/departing people. perhaps adding this feature (like an automatic door at the mall), along with some fuzzy logic and learning ability, would drastically reduce button pushing. with today's cheap computing power, this could surely be done, and if done optically, there would be even more uses for the data stream generated. |
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You don't need two buttons. |
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You only need one button: reverse the
direction of the doors. |
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If they're closed or closing, hit it to open. |
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If they're open or opening, hit it to close. |
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But what picture would that be? |
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Just a big exclamation mark on a door. |
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