pica_pica

People like to push buttons. I realized that today while eating a hamburger on the corner of Davie and Bute. Hamburger Marys'. The pedestrian lights there have a new button installed that is new fangled. It only needs to be touched, not hammered on, and it emits a perfectly digital little blip-bleep when touched.
I realized that people really like the new button. I ran a study in my head while sitting there which I could do because on the other side of the street, they still had installed the old fashioned kind of metal push button that does not blip-bleep at all.

I found the following:

Even though I am sure that EVERYBODY knows that you really only need to hit the button once, most people punch the old metal button 2 or 3 times in rapid succession.... only to follow it up 10 or 15 seconds later with another lone punch, or perhaps another double.

On this side of the street however, with the new hightech digital blip-bleep button, people would touch it once, getting that instant gratification of the blip-bleep, and that seemed to prompt them to just keep standing there touching it.

Old men, young women, businessmen types....
blip-bleep blip-bleep blip-bleep blip-bleep blip-bleep blip-bleep blip-bleep blip-bleep blip-bleep blip-bleep blip-bleep blip-bleep
until the light turned green for them.

Next week, I'll watch and see what part of their hand they like to use the most.

yes, my life is this exciting.