Hotel User Interfaces

[The adventure begins...This is my first blog entry, so be gentle with me]



I recently stayed at the Westin Grand hotel while attending the O'Reilly P2P and Web Services Conference hosted there.



Being vaguely aware of books like "The Design of Everyday Things" (Donald A. Norman, Doubleday, 1990) and Apple's human interface guidelines, I was struck by the idiosyncrasies of the hotel.



There are no less than 5 different elevators from the lobby. Some only go up, others only go down, and some go down but not all the way down to the parking level. Where's a Wonkavator when you need one?



When descending from my room (on the third floor), I could get all the way to the Conference level if I took the left elevator. If I took the right elevator, I had to switch elevators at the Lobby level.



Of course, elevators interfaces have their own quirks. When "calling" an elevator, you have to know which floor you are on to determine the vector to your destination. Even if I know that I'm on the "Promenade," how am I supposed to know if the "Conference" level is up or down from here? If you pressed the wrong arrow to call the elevator, you have to wait for it to change directions. Once in the elevator, you must select your destination, but you can't unselect it if you make a mistake.



I resorted to taking the stairs only to be locked out of certain floors from the stairwell. My favorite is the door to the parking level. When you open this door, you are immediately faced with another door! (like the dual doors that separate adjoining hotel rooms).



Of course, none of the door handles gave any clue as to whether a door should be opened in or out. I saw many people walk away from a door thinking it was locked when they had simply pushed/pulled the wrong way. The disorientation was compounded by a central rotunda with identical hallways in every direction and extensive use of mirrors.



The shower was perhaps the most interesting UI in the hotel. It had two shower heads with directions on how to use them. Do showers really need directions? The hot/cold knob in the shower" was labelled with temperatures from 60 to 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Never mind that 120 degrees is near scalding and that many visitors to DC might be more familiar with the Celsius scale. A simple hot/cold scale would have been sufficient if not better.



The real question is, why do we tolerate and perhaps not even notice these inconveniences in our daily lives? If software behaves as poorly, we scream bloody murder or simply refuse to use it. Automobile reviews address ergonomics, but hotel reviews do not. Why?



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