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Thursday, March 24, 2005
Wired Desktop: Cool elevator
By Wilson Ng
Wired Desktop
INTERFACE. I have been taking elevators all my life. Yet, over the last 30 years or so, the elevators were basically the same, except maybe faster. But the interface was basically the same. You press up or down depending on where you want to go, and then when you are inside, press the number of the floor that you want to go to.
That was why I was pleasantly surprised about the improvement of the elevator when I visited Trafalgar Square in Makati. The elevator interface had been changed.
There are six elevators in the building, labeled A, B, C, D, E and F. When you want to go up or down, you see a keypad (just one keypad with a small screen for all six elevators). You inform the elevator system of the floor you want to go to, say Floor 15. In real time, the screen will inform you which elevator you should take. You then queue up on the selected elevator.
When the elevator opens, it will give you a summary of all the floors it will stop at (yours should be among them). There are no more buttons inside, so there is no way for you to change your floor once you are inside.
If you want to go to another floor where it does not plan to stop, you have to get out of the elevator and repunch your floor, and then queue up on another assigned elevator. I find the system much better than the one I was used to for these reasons
There will be better security. If you punch 5th floor, then you can go only to Floor 5.
There will be more optimal use of the elevator. Instead of being in the elevator that will stop on almost every floor and have only one or two people get on and off, you could be sure that most of the people going to Floor 15 would probably get into the same elevator.
It could be planned that the elevator will stop only on floors that are designated.
For instance, I have seen buildings where they have two elevators. One would stop only at odd numbered floors, and the other would stop only on even numbered floors.
This is good because the elevator travels up and down two floors and can accelerate better. This will also mean that if you are just going up or down one floor, you had better take the stairs. This can easily be programmed into the system to disallow travel up or down one floor only.
It is less prone to abuse. Have you been on an elevator where there are only two people inside, but there are six floors the elevators have to stop at because a child pressed all the buttons? Or have you had the experience of the elevator stopping at a floor, but there was nobody waiting there?
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM. It is great that such technology as elevators can still be improved. It is always good to question conventional practices or conventional wisdom.
For instance, it has always been assumed that computer use can help a student. But recently, a publication by the Telegraph in the UK, citing a publication from the Royal Economic Society, concluded in a study that computer use in school and at home did not contribute to a student’s learning of basic skills like math and reading.
In fact, the study noted that having a computer at home diverted students from doing their homework. The students might be spending too much time chatting, Internet surfing or playing games.
This points out that while we believe that the computer and its proper use are important, the word PROPER should be highlighted. Computers, after all, are just tools. And like many other tools, it is their proper and effective use, and not their mere use, that will deliver the desired results.
(www.bizdrivenlife.)net)
(March 24, 2005 issue)
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