We've all been there: someone dashes for the closing lift doors; a passenger jabs at the vaguely and ambiguously signed buttons, hits the wrong one -- as its a guessing game -- and the doors close on the person who wants to get in.
No one's fault except the adherence to a very poorly designed standard.
The ambiguity is created by a dominant centre line for each operation. It shows ambiguously the sought state of the doors (line indicating closed stiles) and the current state (line indicating the closed stiles). The only differentiator is the small and triangle 'arrow heads' that are positioned to show the direction of door movement. However, this meaning takes some working out, particularly for people with visual or vision impairment, and have just had their view of the symbols dominated by the strong 'closed' stile vertical lines.
The bad design
Good alternatives
Better
Best
All the alternatives are instantly and obviously differentiated and are clearly mimetic of the desired state to be achieved by pressing the relevant button.
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