Why Do All Elevators Have Mirrors?

Once upon a time, elevators didn’t have have mirrors.

Nowadays, it's hard to find any elevator that doesn’t have mirrors.

When did the ‘let’s put mirrors in elevators’-craze start?

Why did we suddenly decide to add mirrors to almost every elevator all over the world?

What happened that made people realize that elevators with mirrors are just plain better?

There are all kinds of logical explanations we can conjure to explain why it makes sense for elevators to have mirrors, such as:

• Making it easier for people in wheelchairs to back out of the elevator

• Help with decreasing the chance of vandalism because people giving people the feeling they are being watched

• To reduce the feeling of claustrophobia by making the elevator feel larger

While all these explanation are perfectly valid, legend has it that's not how the obsession with putting mirrors in elevators started.

In a New York hotel, weary travelers continuously whined about the slow elevators. "I'm tired from traveling, why does the elevator go so slow and make so many stops? Make them go faster!"

The hotel manager became fed up with all the complaints. The occupants kept nagging him about long waiting times. He had looked in the problem many times and he knew the investment required to fix things did not make sense economically - it was simply too expensive. He was close to losing his wits and extremely frustrated.

He made up his mind and drummed up the hotel crew to talk about how they could speed up the elevator. Among the group was a psychology major who reframed the problem: "What if the problem isn't the fact they are waiting for a slow elevator, but the fact they are bored while waiting?"

He suggested to install a mirror in the elevators. People love looking at themselves in the mirror, and it will give them something to do while waiting. It was way cheaper than replacing the elevators, so they decided to give it a shot.

After the mirrors were installed, all complaints evaporated overnight.

The moral of the story?

Instead of expending all your energy to find the perfect solution, make sure you explored the different options of framing the right problem.

If you solve the wrong problem, the right solution doesn’t matter.

It’s not about better elevators, it’s about improving the situation of the people who want go on the elevator.