I was in a brand new office building today that has an ultra-modern ThyssenKrupp elevator system. It is a design disaster.

The first thing I noticed is that there are no standard call buttons. Instead, the wall space between the cars is occupied by numeric keypads. The rider is supposed to key in the destination floor, and then a display directs him to the correct elevator.

Although that’s non-standard operation, it’s not terribly intrusive. The problem arises when the manufacturer goes a step further by following through on the claim that, “there is no need for buttons inside the car.”

That’s right… no buttons inside the car. Think about that. If you happen to get into an elevator, and then change your mind about your destination, you’re out of luck. There’s no way to get off early or stay on past your selected destination.

And it gets even worse if you enter an elevator without first making your selection on the keypad. As often happens when people are in a rush, they see an open elevator with someone getting in and they simply follow. But if you haven’t made a floor selection before getting in, you have no way to get to your destination. No buttons inside the car… brilliant.

One might think an elevator car without buttons would have a minimalist feel. But no… there’s a TV in there, blasting advertising, or CNN, or whatever programming the building management decides to feed to a captive audience. There’s also a fancy display over the door which tells you the time, the temperature, and every floor that the elevator is scheduled to stop on. Unfortunately, there are no field labels, so what you see looks something like “11:32 31C 8 20 24″.

The one thing the display doesn’t indicate is what everyone expects to see when they look at numbers over an elevator door: the floor you’re on. In fact, the only way to know what floor you’re on is by the serene voice which accompanies the doors opening. The problem is, you can’t hear it over the television. And I guess deaf people (or those who don’t speak the language) have to take the stairs.

When it was time to go back down, I was faced with another challenge. Since the system uses a standard numeric keypad, it has no floor-specific buttons. It’s pretty much guesswork to figure out that: 0 = Lobby, 1 = Mezzanine, -2 = Parking, etc. I’m left to wonder if the term “usability testing” is even mentioned in engineering schools these days.

This whole design debacle is indicative of a larger trend that I’m seeing lately. The focus on incorporating the latest high-tech features eclipses any attention paid to the device’s ability to perform its primary function.

An elevator is supposed to get me to the appropriate floor quickly, comfortably, efficiently, safely, and with a minimum of effort on my part. Any design which detracts from that, or in any way makes the device less efficient than its predecessors, is movement in the wrong direction, no matter how “cool” it looks or what extra bells and whistles it provides.

The people who buy and install these systems want the “latest, greatest” technology, even if the old systems worked better. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the same building features an equally wacky high-tech parking system.

Interestingly, this seems to be something of a cultural phenomenon, as I see far more of it here than when I lived in the United States. For example, my apartment complex recently replaced the standard remote controls for the entry gate with a fancy RFID system. Now, instead of being able to remotely open the gate from 30 yards away, I have to pull the car up, stop, roll down my window (often when it’s raining), and place my card within inches of the special reader. It’s astoundingly less efficient than the 1960s technology we were using before, and it costs a lot more too. Arrrgh!