Below is an interesting story about a building where tenants were complaining about long elevator waiting times. The solution shows how the key to solving a problem is often defining the problem correctly in the first place.
A classic story illustrates very well the potential cost of placing a problem in a disciplinary box. It involves a multistoried office building in New York. Occupants began complaining about the poor elevator service provided in the building. Waiting times for elevators at peak hours, they said, were excessively long. Several of the tenants threatened to break their leases and move out of the building because of this…
Management authorized a study to determine what would be the best solution. The study revealed that because of the age of the building no engineering solution could be justified economically. The engineers said that management would just have to live with the problem permanently.
The desperate manager called a meeting of his staff, which included a young recently hired graduate in personnel psychology…The young man had not focused on elevator performance but on the fact that people complained about waiting only a few minutes. Why, he asked himself, were they complaining about waiting for only a very short time? He concluded that the complaints were a consequence of boredom. Therefore, he took the problem to be one of giving those waiting something to occupy their time pleasantly. He suggested installing mirrors in the elevator boarding areas so that those waiting could look at each other or themselves without appearing to do so. The manager took up his suggestion. The installation of mirrors was made quickly and at a relatively low cost. The complaints about waiting stopped.
Today, mirrors in elevator lobbies and even on elevators in tall buildings are commonplace.
Excerpted from “Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track” [Amazon].
Stan
on 17 Sep 08Another rehash of the old elevator & mirror story, eh? It’s been around a while.
David Andersen
on 17 Sep 08I get the point you are trying to make, but the example is silly. Not everyone is interested in trading time for the opportunity to preen and gawk. Why not fast elevators and mirrors?
Sam Brown
on 17 Sep 08An old one but a good one, now to figure out a way to incorporate that kind of psychology into my work! ;)
Manik Juneja
on 17 Sep 08They need to put a mirror on browsers too. People complain of too much loading time for some websites ;-)
ceejayoz
on 17 Sep 08I prefer the approach many European elevators take. Instead of pressing a button in the elevator, you press one in the lobby and it tells you which elevator shaft to go in.
This lets the elevators load balance and plan for the most efficient combinations of passengers.
Gary
on 17 Sep 08I also heard that NASA spent millions of dollars to develop a pen that could write in space, while the Soviets used a fifteen cent pencil. Folksy urban legends as management metaphors work great!
David
on 17 Sep 08@ceejayoz – There are a good number of NYC buildings that use that method.
Rich
on 17 Sep 08I like the functionality of the selecting what floor before you enter, it is one of those, why didn’t we think of that before moments. Cuts down some cost too because you only need 1 set of numbers rather than a set in every elevator.
Morning Toast
on 17 Sep 08It’s all about entertainment. People like to have something to do. It’s the same reason they put newspapers in some (men’s) bathrooms.
Most of my projects back in college revolved around games and gaming parts (like word searches, cards, etc). The prof asked why all my things seem to be interactive and games. I told him it’s because that’s all I’ve known - I’m of an age where I’ve always had something to do since I was a child; something to keep me occupied…games, handhelds, toys, legos, whatever. And people could relate to my projects because they were more “fun” in many ways that just a straight painting or drawing study. I’m not saying my projects were always successful (the prof wasn’t impressed), but my peers (spectators) enjoyed them and that’s more valuable to me.
Stories like the elevator are just examples of “if you can’t find a solution to the problem, change the problem.”
Paul
on 17 Sep 08Rich, you’ll actually need more sets of number buttons: 1 set per floor instead of 1 set per elevator.
Ben
on 17 Sep 08“Cuts down some cost too because you only need 1 set of numbers rather than a set in every elevator.”
Uh… well, if I have 4 elevators and 10 floors, then I’d, traditionally, need 10 up buttons, 10 down buttons and 4 copies of each number (totaling 40, as well as emergency buttons, etc. which are constant between models). Under the new model, I’d need 0 up buttons, 0 down buttons and 10 copies of each number (totaling 100). So you end up needing 40 more bits of plastic in the better UI version.
Or am I missing something inherent to this?
MattH
on 17 Sep 08Paul/Ben, you are missing something. You have to walk down the stairs, push the button you want, then walk back up and wait.
Super B
on 17 Sep 08The point of this story is getting to the “root cause” of the problem at hand, not just redefining the problem (although they go hand in hand). In my experience software teams often don’t dig deep enough when user experience or performance issues arise, they simply fix the surface “bug”...
Spending a few minutes asking “Why” will often reveal the root cause of most problems. In fact, I often encourage my team to ask “Why” at least five times (pretend you’re 5 years old..:-). This really helps get to the bottom of any problem, which just like the story mentioned, is often much different than you first imagined.
Rich
on 17 Sep 08doh, “MATH IS HARD” :)
David
on 17 Sep 08I read the elevator story from Edward de Bono in the late 60s with his idea of lateral thinking. Making education progress that way would be wonderful, but in the 40 years since lateral thinking hit the scene, does education follow that path? No, we just smiles at the stories of the short man who lived on the tenth floor, and the puddle of water in the locked room.
It would take a revolution in social justice and in the definition of what makes a meaningful life to make any kind of dent in the school structure.
Change in society comes first – and that involves a shift in power – then the will would be there to change what happens in schools.
By the way your Twitter Stats are: Following 13 Followers 5,623
So many followers, but you don’t see them.
GeeIWonder
on 17 Sep 08The point of this story [...]
is that people tend to be self-absorbed and vain enough to be infinitely more interested in the vagaries of their own hair/outfit than they could possibly be in, for instance, architectural details.
Also, the version I heard said it was a mirror salesperson, noit a psychology expert. Maybe there’s some overlap there though.
David Andersen
on 17 Sep 08“The point of this story is getting to the “root cause” of the problem at hand.”
If that was true they would have come up with faster elevators. I don’t recall the story mentioning anyone complaining about not being able to preen.
“In fact, I often encourage my team to ask “Why” at least five times…”
Why not ten times? Ask yourself that at least five times.
Tom Davis
on 17 Sep 08The question the new guy ask was, “What would be universally interesting. And the answer was, “People are interested in themselves, and in looking at others without committing to a conversation.”
As GeeIWonder noticed, that’s really the point of the story. The rest anyone could have figured out.
@Manik Juneja, what we need to do now is figure out how to incorporate doing something personal or voyeuristic in a browser which would not suffer from the loading time problem.
Michael Moncur
on 17 Sep 08That’s just the kind of community-driven corporate nonsense I hate putting up with. “They asked for faster elevators. Let’s just give them mirrors so they can preen themselves.”
Next time I make a web site that loads slowly, I’ll put a little JavaScript Breakout game on there for people to play while they wait. Then I won’t have to solve the real problem.
Marcus Blankenship
on 18 Sep 08Is this why splash screens were invented? To give people something to look at while your software takes forever to load? Maybe my splash screen should tap into the computers web cam… :-)
Paul
on 18 Sep 08This is EXACTLY why loading screens were invented.
Chris Snyder
on 18 Sep 08That is the most depressing thing I’ve read all morning. Vanity will always trump good engineering.
Must get to work on the laser stare that will allow me to subtly deform lobby mirrors without appearing to do so, thus making people feel both fat AND bored.
Henk Kleynhans
on 18 Sep 08Yeah, Sadly I’m busy scouring the 37Signals blogs and Highrise Forums to see if there is any progress being made to give the world a Google Gears version of Highrise.
I love Highrise and have recommended it to many many people, but it’s getting slower and slower by the day.
Please don’t show me a mirror!
Amy
on 18 Sep 08The point of much design is to alleviate some kind of aggravation or pain. Here it turns out that the reported pain is caused by something non-obvious. Some will decry the solution as dishonest, but the pain went away – and with no adverse effects. No doubt the apocryphal building didn’t charge the apocryphal tenants for the apocryphal retrofitting of mirrors—and the tenants’ pain was alleviated faster, too, than “hood engineering” would have allowed.
It’s a cheesy story about a very good lesson. Not sure why anyone would bother to nitpick so much (altho it is just a little bit old and well-beaten).
Greg Paskill
on 20 Sep 08This is reminiscent of what happens repeatedly in hiring. You’ve got the right people trying to solve the wrong problem.
I once heard of a similar situation where a company went through 3 VP’s of Marketing until their product actually sold. The company repeatedly thought their campaigns were no good. The 3rd VP actually tried using the product and saw it was difficult to install (a showerhead that wouldn’t leak.) When he suggested a repackaging and based the messaging on ease-of-use and great massaging showers, sales skyrocketed.
Unfortunately, these types of problems force today’s employers to develop an incessant fear of making a hiring mistake. Then they don’t get the chance to practice hiring, just like truly capable people can’t practice reframing problems.
This discussion is closed.