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On Sun, Mar 06, 2005 at 03:30:12PM +0000, Aaron Crane wrote: > At each floor, the outside-the-lift controls consisted of a single > 'call' button. I encountered this just last week outside an elevator in a brand new hotel in Portugal. Fortunately the building was only 5 floors (-2, -1, 0, 1 and 2 of course) and the lift seemed to be of the HHGTG variety and liked to sulk in the basement when it wasn't doing anything. So it didn't matter too much but they went one worse. The call button looked like this: ------- | | | /\ | | | ------- ------- | | | o | | | ------- ------- | | | \/ | | | ------- Notice I said "button". The other two were just lights yet they were bevelled and recessed and looked remarkably similar to the button. I got into the hotel after 20 hours of travel and stood there pushing the up "button" wondering what in the hell was wrong. That it didn't depress didn't bother me as I figured it was just touch sensitive. > (And I claim this is still on-topic, because I managed to shoehorn the > lift's control software into that last paragraph.) Given that I just gave a talk relating normal world user interface design to an audience of programmers, I tend to agree, software or not. Anyhow, software plays the "maybe I'm a button, maybe I'm an indicator, maybe I'm both, you'll just have to press me and find out" game all the time.There's stuff above here
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