Elevator Instructions

The “Perfect Reader” Approach

Last semester, I took the elevator down from the 4th floor to the 1st floor of a building every Monday and Wednesday after class. The process went like this almost every time:

(What follows IS NOT a set of INSTRUCTIONS. It’s a description of a situation. YOUR ASSIGNMENT is to write INSTRUCTIONS TO THE ELEVATOR that the elevator will follow.)

The Situation

  1. I press the Down button in the fourth floor hallway.
  2. The Down button lights in response.
  3. The elevator door opens and students exit the elevator.
  4. I notice the Up Arrow is lit inside the door jamb, so I delay entering.
  5. The door closes, and the elevator continues Up to the fifth floor.
  6. The Down button remains lit. I don’t have to press it again.
  7. The door opens again, the Down button goes dark, and I enter the usually empty elevator.
  8. I press the 1 button inside the elevator. It lights in response.
  9. The doors close, and the elevator continues Down to the 1st floor, usually without an intervening stop.
  10. The 1 button goes dark, the door opens, and I exit.

Clearly, the elevator is responding to some very specific instructions. But not all the rules are evident from my experience. Some have to be discovered by hard thought. Does it respond differently to the Up button than to the Down button? Under what conditions does it reverse direction? More specifically, would it stop on the fourth floor on the way to the fifth floor if no passenger inside wanted to get off on 4? What other variations would the programmer have to anticipate to give the elevator a complete set of instructions?

(These are suggestions of questions you’ll need to address in your THINKING about how to direct the elevator to act. You don’t have to answer them in your post. But your INSTRUCTIONS should indicate that you have considered them ((and others)). For example, since the elevator acts the same way whether passengers get on or not, it makes no sense to INSTRUCT the elevator to wait for anyone to board or depart.)

The Assignment

The numbered model above DESCRIBES for a HUMAN AUDIENCE how the elevator functions as experienced by human passengers. That IS NOT your assignment.

This is the assignment:

The Elevator Instructions assignment is an exercise in writing to a VERY particular audience, a non-sentient elevator that knows only what it’s told and will respond to instructions whether they are logical or not. A good response to the assignment will contain no irrelevant or redundant instructions, will not contradict itself, and will result in an economical operation (of the elevator) without wasted stops or unnecessary delays to passengers.

WRITE A COMPLETE SET OF INSTRUCTIONS
for an ignorant elevator that needs to be told everything.

SAMPLE INSTRUCTIONS, in no particular order:

—Respond to all Summons Buttons by PROCEEDING to the corresponding floor.
—When arriving at any floor to which you have been Summoned, STOP the elevator and OPEN the door.
—Following 15 seconds of inactivity on any floor, CLOSE the door.
—If Proceeding up, IGNORE all Down Summonses.
—If Proceeding down, IGNORE all UP Summonses.

To achieve clarity and brevity, create terms like Up Button (you’ll need one for the buttons inside the elevator that indicate which floor is your destination). In my first description, my choice for a button inside the elevator was the 1 Button.

In the SAMPLE INSTRUCTIONS, I’ve used Summons Buttons to indicate the Up and Down buttons in the hallway outside the elevator. I might use the term Destination Buttons to identify the numbered buttons inside the elevator. And so on. Make your own choices, but make them clear.

Publish the first draft of your instructions to the Riddle category (and your Username category, of course).

DEADLINE: MIDNIGHT (11:59PM) SUN SEP 15

This is a minor Non-Portfolio assignment, not as important as your Portfolio pieces, but still significant.

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The ChatGPT “Solution”

In case you’re wondering, ChatGPT doesn’t have a clue how to complete this task. It can describe how the elevator operates from a user’s point of view, but it can’t begin to craft a set of instructions based on any prompt I was able to come up with. If you’re really good at AI and want to help me out, please let me know.