observation project - the 370 elevators

Pre-Observation:

I chose to observe the interactions between people and the 370 Jay St. elevators. I’ve used these elevators before (and had my gripes with them), but haven’t really analyzed how I (and others) truly interact with them, what works and what doesn’t. Based on my experience with the elevators, I’d assume lots of people are using this to get to class, and are mostly in a rush. However, there might also be some more leisurely users who don’t need to get somewhere on time. I also know that there are people who are taking it to higher-up floors, but also people taking it to the 2nd and 3rd floor (as I do sometimes). There are many elevators in the bank, so I’m curious as to how that might confuse or assist in the usage of them. In order to observe the usability, I’ll first observe the bank, then take the elevator up and down a few times to see how people actually interact with them.

Observations:

The elevators work like your standard elevator, and everyone I observed seemed to know what to do: press the button, wait for the light and noise, walk into elevator, click the button. Since there was no indicator of which elevator was going to open, people were unsure of where to stand. Most people gathered in the middle while waiting. Sometimes wait times were quite long (a few minutes), and sometimes multiple elevators would open even if they weren’t going up or down. I did notice that many people had to run to make it into the already open elevators, and sometimes would not make it. The people who did not run would also sometimes not make it there on time when walking, even if they were waiting in the middle the whole time. If someone was wearing headphones, they were typically looking around trying to figure out which elevator was lighting up. When I took the elevator, there was an interesting distribution of the people inside - many of them tucked away to the corners or the back, leaving the middle a vulnerable space because people were getting in and out through there. A variety of floors, both upper and lower, were selected. At times, people weren’t paying attention and would walk out of the elevator at the wrong floor. Confused, they could sometimes make it back inside before the doors closed, but sometimes could not. Overall, I think there are some wayfinding improvements that could be made. Some things were at the fault of the users (not paying attention to what floor they were on, for example), but many were assumptions made by the machine that people walk at a certain pace or are standing by the door already.