Design Challenge: Design an interface for a 1000 floors elevator.
UX designer Interview question asked by Google, while challenging Designers seems to have captivated the global design community:
So here it is —
What is the tallest building in the world?
The building with 163 floors in the world is the Burj Khalifa standing 2,722 ft tall. Building Burj khalifa took six years to complete with 163 floors, making a math bit simpler will take about six times to make a building with about 978 floors depending on size and workforce. It will more than likely take 40 years to make a building that could have a 1000 floor.
How high can we go?
The taller the building, the more the risk. It needs a strong foundation. Need the foundation of 18,400,000 square feet for a 1000 floor building. This tower would be legit taller than the highest point of the Appalachian Mountains. The best part about it is that you probably won’t have to deal with any gross looking pigeons perched on top of the tower because pigeons are amateurs and only fly up around 6,000 feet in the air.
This will the project of the future.
Assumptions
The building with 1000 floor: The tallest thing we could ever possibly build.
I’m assuming the foundation would be massive, and the structural elements at the lower levels would also be pretty large. The most challenging problems that would have to be addressed would be handling wind and vertical transportation movement. Still, we would have the engineering capabilities and the materials handling and design capabilities to achieve this in the future.
The floors for everyday use, let alone in an emergency, would be a huge feat requiring many stairwells and elevators. Even just removing waste from all of those floors would be a challenge if you think about it. They are getting water up to the upper floors, drinking, using in bathrooms, and some pipes for fire sprinkler systems. Wow, there are a lot of challenges.
Challenge
How would you design an interface for a 1,000-floor elevator?
Research
This research is a broad subject, so let’s narrow it down to few key things:
Who are the users?
As far as I can tell, four primary users need to be considered:
- Residents Elevators
- Service Elevators
- Heavy Material and goods Elevator
What will be the speed of an elevator?
Let’s assume the speed to be around 22 mph, and it takes 2 mins and 40 secs (the Burj Khalifa’s top speed). This means it’d take about eight and half minutes to get to the 1000th floor when traveling at full speed.
How Many people can accommodate it?
This biggish elevator can hold around 50 people, probably has a few seats for rest, and a screen for entertainment while waiting to reach the floor.
When do users interact with their elevators, and how?
When they arrive at the elevator lobby and call the elevator, either they can enter the destination floor before entering. They mostly assign the floor when they are inside the elevator by pressing the screen or lift pad’s displayed buttons.
Ideate
IIn the ideation phase, I focus on generating ideas and solutions by defining challenges, user journey maps, user goals, needs, and user flow charts, finalized with some sketches to prepare for the prototyping phase.
Define
What are some possible solutions to our challenge?
- Grouping passengers to specific elevators based on access levels.
- Adding and removing floors should be easy. Feedback should be seen visually.
- Voice activation to inform the floor and its essential details.
- Passenger seats for the old age group and physically disabled.
- Adding entertainment sources for long waiting times and people with Claustrophobia.
- Time and details for the next floor.
- Quick tabs for popular floors (parking, playground, hospital).
- Temperature control.
- The oxygen supply elevator: an oxygen-containing unit provided in a facility mounting space formed on the elevator and has oxygen at a pressure higher than atmospheric pressure.
- Adding auto floor calls with time and distance display to reduce users’ cognitive load.
- Integrating an elevator destination control system per 100 floors for passengers traveling to the residence, work, and leisure destinations where the user selects which floor they need before they even enter the lift, through panels in the public lobby, will enable them to get to their destinations faster and reduce congestion at peak hours. This then directs the user to which lift they should wait at. This will reduce the average travel time by 50%.
Cons
You’ll likely spend a reasonable amount of time searching for the right floor button to press. A small pro is that you only need to press one button, and you’re done.
Selecting the wrong floor and getting into that lift will result in you going to that floor, with no option to change your mind.
Methods such as voice activation would be impractical considering the volume of people we would be catering for. Also, in places, breaking silence in a lift is a crime punishable by death.
StoryBoarding
The different scenarios are sketched out to help create the wireframes.
Scenario 1: At the Lobby kiosk, call a lift — select destination.
Task: Lift is assigned with lift lobby and arriving time.
Scenario 2: Inside assigned lift needs to add a destination.
Task: Add a last-minute destination to the lift after it has been assigned
Wireframes
When working on wireframes, focus on the usability aspect Putting yourself in your user’s shoes. How will the user feel interacting with the interface? Does it solve the problem?
Lobby Kiosk -
- Quick links for popular floors (Gym, shopping, hospital).
- Capacity (weight)
- Open and Close buttons.
- Adding and removing floors should be easy. Feedback should be seen visually.
- Lift Assigned with Lift Lobby Information and Arriving time Displayed visually.
Lift Pad — (Inside Lift)
- Time and details for the upcoming and next floor.
- Add new destination easily.
- Get your new destination assigned while you are in the lift.
Final Designs
In the end, I just thought I want a minimal, techy interface with a readable font. I used the Source Sans Pro font for an interface. This was the outcome.
Conclusion
This solution works well for what it is, a quick way for multiple people to navigate between a large number of floors. Again, the idea of a 1000 floor building is absurd at this point. But Every problem has a solution; as designers, we must do our best to identify the issues and find those solutions.
“So, How high can we go?
It depends on how far people are willing to take it.”
