While riding the freight elevator up to my office (I’ve been meaning to lose some weight so I can use the normal one) I noticed the sixth floor button does not light up. When this first came to my attention, I tried pressing multiple times and even banging on it but the button remained eerily dark. I concluded that it might have been broken or perhaps that the sixth floor no longer existed. As I wondered uncomfortably, a curious thing happened – the elevator stopped at the sixth floor after all! I realized that it wasn’t the button but the indicator light on the button that was broken.
I feel that this story taught me a valuable lesson about what can happen when an interface fails to communicate with it’s client. Although I’ve learned from experience that the elevator is indeed going to my floor, there was a moment where I was not only uninformed but on some unconscious level confused, uncomfortable, and afraid. Let us all remember from this experience how important it is to provide feedback to the user!
Thank you.
