Mobile Interaction with Elevators: Improving People Flow in Complex Buildings

This paper introduces a novel concept to support people flow in complex built environments focusing on mobile interaction with elevators. With the developed mobile application, users can indicate in advance where they are going, while the application handles corresponding elevator calls and informs the user at appropriate times. The application can be configured to meet typical usage patterns and needs, such as quick access to common destinations, scheduled calls based on estimated walk time, and continuous status information of the allocated elevators. The results from formative user studies, including two in-situ user evaluations and a long-term field trial, show that the application can provide added value to its users in complex building environments. Key design issues in this context are to provide greater flexibility in elevator scheduling, and to clearly communicate both the success of the user's commands and elevator status in the mobile interface.