I now strongly believe that the ‘up’ and ‘down’ symbols on lift entrances are not at all a good way to make people’s lives easier. I often get confused seeing the signs in morning: ‘Up’ symbol is for calling the lifts upwards or is it that we want to go upstairs (and vice versa for down)???

I know some people will say that with time people learn it but I strongly feel that this ambiguity sometimes leads to waste of time in a way that suppose someone living on 2nd floor wants to go on ground floor and on seeing that ‘up’ arrow symbol may think: I want lift to come upstairs (that is on 2nd floor) or I want to go upstairs (even when I want to go downstairs). I know that there are numbers present that indicate on which floor lift is at a particular time (and hence should make decision on the basis of where they themselves want to go) but I think these symbols when present with the numbers create some form of ambiguity even if it is for few seconds (a lot can change in few seconds, one may end up somewhere one didn’t want to go (especially when one is in hurry)). Only up and down symbols will be fine. All I will care about then is where I want to go. I won’t care about where lift currently is.

This is one example of a scenerio where logic behind building things is right but still it creates some form of ambiguity.