Comment by jmyeet

This is a good article. It reminds me of a story.

At a previous employer we had heteregenous elevators. In one bank, some went to the lower half of floors only while others went to all and the company installed a "smart" elevator system. I kind of became known because I was constantly yelling about this system in the feedback group because I hate "smart" elevators and and (IMHO) they just don't work. What actually works is express elevators and sky lobbies.

This article covers one of the deficiencies this system had: full elevators. For example, you'd want to go down and an elevator would skip your floor because another had already been assigned. That one would show up full and you couldn't go down. Down wasn't so bad because the stairs weren't a bad option but up was terrible. Going up a few floors was fine. Going up 20 was... a bigger issue.

Back in the day we had elevator operators and people in the lobby during the morning rush who would shepherd people into particular elevators. I actually think this system works way better than anything technology has come up with. Even if you nail the implementation (and I've never experienced elevators that have), people don't read and will just get into elevators anyway.

Anyway the article says that generally speaking on smaller banks simple up and down buttons work best. I absolutely agree.

There's a deeper issue here though and that is solutions looking for a problem. Nobody is making money from up and down buttons. They are fromn selling smart elevator solutions. And you see this everywhere in life. It basically devolves into rent-seeking behavior. Salespeople wine and dine a couple of people responsible for making decisions and then make bank on selling something nobody wants or needs as well as the constant maintenance and updates.