Alternative control interfaces for an elevator of a 10,000-floor building
The 10,000-floor elevator is a huge deal. Let’s figure it out.
Design challenges often intimidate you to allow your creative juices flow in all possible directions.
“We spend a lot of time designing the bridge, but not enough time thinking about the people who are crossing it.” – Dr. Prabhjot Singh, Director of Systems Design at the Earth Institute
Problem Statement:
From Coursera: Design alternative control interfaces for an elevator. A really long elevator. An elevator that can service all of the floors of a 10,000-floor building. Nevermind that such a building, at 30,000 meters (100,000 feet, or roughly 3–4 times higher than Mt. Everest) could probably not be built given current technology. Do consider, though, that at 20.5 m/s (the current top speed for an elevator, a record held by Shanghai Tower), it would take nearly 30 minutes to reach the top floor if there were no stops in between.
Empathize
Empathizing requires you to relate to the problem before you actually start solving it.
Designing a Hypothetical Elevator for a 10,000-floor building! Yes, You read that right!
Although the world’s tallest structure, The Burj Khalifa, standing tall at the height of 321 m has a maximum of 163 floors! So even imagining a building of 10,000 floors is kind of Overwhelming.
But design has no boundaries. One can literally solve almost any problem with strategic design.
Define
A 10,000-floor building is equivalent to a major city, that can include Corporate Offices, Residential, Schools, Colleges, Hotels, Shopping malls, Hospitals, Salons, Gym and there’s no end to this list…
Managing and designing such a system is very complex and no such technology exists as of now to help implement such an architecture. But hypothesis and considerations have no limits.
A 10,000-floor building can incorporate various Infrastructures and each needs a specific environment to sustain. They all have their challenges and constraints.
A residential floor wouldn’t like entertaining professionals and corporate people to enter on their floor or even vice versa. No residences or offices would like people in the shopping mall to reach out to their floors and disturb their privacy.
A strict eye for security would be of great necessity, especially in these kinds of buildings.
A service and maintenance floor every 50th floor or even the 100th floor would be required for the better functionality and maintenance of the building.
The fact that the schools and offices would require a comparatively quieter environment and wouldn’t like to entertain the busyness of the shopping mall or a restaurant or places for social gathering. Arranging them in the fashion that accommodates and fits each other’s environment can make this building a better place.
Ideate
The Height of a 10000-floor building is approximately 43,000 m, considering the average height of one floor of a building is 14 feet/4.3 m. The speed of the fastest elevator in Shanghai town is 20.5 m/s. The time required to reach the 10,000th floor from the ground is approximately 34.95 minutes and for a single floor, it is 0.2 s. The lift should sustain the crowd of at least a few dozens.
My engineer mind couldn’t stop thinking about the Working and maintenance of such a building that is approximately 3–4x the height of the tallest mountain of the world, The Mt Everest.
Although its a Hypothetical Situation, I was quite concerned about making the entire experience smooth and timeless.
Assuming I live on the 4108th floor and my office is on the 4888th floor, It would be quite disturbing to wait for the elevator to come from the ground floor to the 4108th floor then take me to the 4888th floor.
Whereas, it doesn’t make sense that a person who needs to go to the 10,000th floor to change his dispatcher 10 times, after every 1000 floors. So they can use the elevator that directly help them reach the 10,000th-floor
I tried to design the elevator that gives an amazing user experience and is not very time consuming for people who need to travel in between the floors. It will allow users to change their dispatchers if they want to reach the floors of the succeeding dispatcher.
For Example: A person is on the 946th floor and wants to reach the 2154th floor, He/She will have to change his dispatcher twice during their commute. The first dispatcher ends on the 1000th floor and the second dispatcher starts on the 1000th floor itself.
This would relatively require a little conscious effort but in exchange would reward with time.
User Personas
Prototyping
- Interface
The Interface of the Elevator is designed to be very easy to understand and use. Manually type in the destination and hit enter!
You’ll be updated with the time you’ll require to reach your destination.
In case of multiple destinations selected, it will display the time required to reach the closest destination, and once reached, it will automatically tune itself to show the time required to reach the next closest destination.
I don’t want you to get bored while you are on your way. So, you can choose to utilize your time by listening to music or watching a video from your favorite YouTuber, catching up on current affairs on the news, or even listening to a podcast. Whatever you choose, will be broadcasted on the smart screen on the adjacent wall. Happy Onboarding.
In case, you accidentally have forgotten something or have entered the wrong destination. You can always hit the STOP button to immediately stop on the next floor and then enter the correct destination.
The alarm and phone button helps you get back in control, if in case of any dysfunctionality.
The elevator is already connected with high-speed internet but in case of a network error, you can always choose to connect your own WIFI and continue streaming.
2. Top View
The top view is designed to give an entire overview of the Elevator at a glance. The flow that the user can experience is as follows.
Assume, Riya is going to work at 9 am on the 1089th floor, while simultaneously dropping her kids to school on the 201st.
She can directly step in the elevator, enter her desired destination i.e the school on the 201st floor.
Her kids like using the tables provided to draw, play games, or even read about stuff they enjoy on the Internet.
While she’s very fond of music and grabs a set of headphones, chooses her favorite song, and enjoys while the school is arrived, drops her kids and enters her office floor to get to work while continuing to listen to her favorite song.
3. Front View
The Front view is designed to give the user the ease and comfort while during their journey. The user can step-in, enter the destination, keep track of the current floor, time to the required destination while enjoying the amenities in the elevator.
Sam works on the 9849th floor and doesn’t want to switch in between 10 dispatchers to reach his destination. He could directly board the longest elevator and reach his destination without any discomfort.
He wants to spend his time doing productive things and is very fond of audiobooks and business podcasts. The headphones in the elevator help him do exactly that! What a promising use of his time!
4. Side Wall 2
Users can utilize their time in the elevator by choosing their favorite music video, youtube videos, podcasts, and even news. They can choose to continue using the elevator’s WIFI or even connect their own in case of dysfunctionalities.
However, this lift is designed to accommodate at least a few dozens of people, so choosing to play something that interests the majority can enhance the experience.
Om is a fitness enthusiast, on his way to the gym, he likes watching sports and workout videos, if he’s alone in the elevator, he could actually turn on the TV to watch workout or health and wellbeing videos.
A screen dedicated to display details of every floor in the building. A similar screen is installed in the lobby for people not sure about the floor of their destination.
5. Side Wall 3
Parents(even the parents of the future) are often concerned about their children’s digital wellbeing. Kids often prefer using their time playing games and watching videos.
While we can improvise their usage of time by the drawing tables installed in the elevator, these are special kinds of digital screens that don’t harm the eyes of the user, like Amazon Kindle.
You can happily motivate your children to use them for drawing, learning something new, with their time in the elevator. Or you can carry your kid’s favorite books to read during their time inside.
Riya is extremely thrilled and contented as the tablets help her in her role as a good nurturer. Kids love what they are doing, and it doesn’t harm their eyesight and takes good care of their digital wellbeing
6. Side Wall 4
If, in case you are someone who likes their privacy better, I’ve got you covered. Pick a corner, put on your headphones, and choose your favorite Podcast, Music, or Audiobook. Whatever you like better, and enjoy your ride!
Om can’t really watch workout or fitness videos if there are many people in the elevator, it wouldn’t match their common interest and might be a little awkward for him.
But, He can simply grab the headphones and listen to podcasts or health audiobooks on the go!
Riya and Sam actively use the headphones to listen to their favorite songs, business podcasts, and audiobooks.
Your devices can be drained too, connect them to the charging socket to fully charge them on the go!.
Test
I’ve used the Design Thinking methodology of Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test, to solve this design problem.
As I had no Testing methodology to test the working of his hypothetical design problem, my testing begins after you have finished reading this case study till the end.
Would you like to try traveling in this functional elevator of a 10,000-floor building, If given a chance?
Take this survey and let me know: https://bit.ly/3gXGGiT
Further Developments
- An Elevator management system like a Biometric or an ID card reader can be incorporated for security purposes
- A touch screen and voice-based input mechanism can be implemented with concise regulation because it might create a little confusion for multiple passengers.
Winding up Thoughts
A structure like this isn’t really possible on earth at least within a few centuries but we can imagine and have fun!
Although these designs can still be implemented in tall buildings and corporate offices to effectively utilize the onboarding time.
Hope you enjoyed reading this study! If you have any ideas that can help improve the User Experience and Design, reach out me to via the Google form and we shall work together to make it even better.
Thank you for investing your time.
