Title: Five things elevators teach us about design, psychology and hats
Context: Elevators can teach us a lot about psychology, such as how psychologically painful it is to be locked in a tiny space with strangers.
Synopsis: Of all the things we humans ever built, few are as odd as the elevator. A minuscule room you share with random strangers that moves along a single vertical plane and is controlled by an often confusing array of buttons, some of which may or may not even do anything. Sure it beats taking the stairs, but no one is ever comfortable on an elevator. Is there ever a greater feeling of relief than the last person besides yourself getting out of the elevator so you can complete the journey in relative peace and solitude even if it’s just for a floor or two? Even more bizarrely, the elevator experience has remained pretty much the same since they were first introduced in the mid-1800’s. Plenty of time for innovation and improvement but other than going higher faster, it’s still the same socially obnoxious few minutes of your life that you’ll never get back. That said, there are still a few things we designers can learn from these anti-gravity death closets, such as learning not to fear the wrong things, brushing up on your timeboxed self-promotion script, and no matter how high you jump at the end, avoiding the sudden stop at the bottom of a freefall will always be a fool’s errand.
Best Bit: “In the lift, we are all the same; humans trying to survive defying the laws of physics.”
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