WTF Cell Phone Design

[HungLikeJesus]

Cell Phone with Rotary Dial Announced

With cell phones become popular for people of all walks of life, a new company AARPwireless has announced an easy-to-use cell phone for the elderly set that includes a rotary dial. Called the RotoCell, it uses Bluehair technology to transform pulse signals into touchtone. Grandma's who enjoy text messaging will have to wait for the upgrade, RotoText, due out next year. The RotoCell will be available in June for $59.99.

[HungLikeJesus]

Here's a real one: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/200...le_rotary.html

[SteveDallas]

Originally Posted by HungLikeJesus

With cell phones become popular for people of all walks of life, a new company AARPwireless has announced an easy-to-use cell phone for the elderly set

Shouldn't those buttons be "Yes," "No," and "GET OFF MY LAWN!!"?

[Flint]

Originally Posted by dar512

Actually, I think that can be extended into a general rule. Anything with more than two buttons has underlying complexity and will require a manual.

Things that have more than two buttons that you think are intuitive are only easy for you because you have experience with some similar metaphor previously.

I think you're placing the burden of de-obscurifying badly designed devices upon the customer, who has already paid his hard-earned dollars to purchase a product that should be designed to perform the function it was intended for.

It's a goddamn telephone. I don't care if it has cameras and all this other useless crap on it, make me punch extra buttons to get to those superfluous features, and I wouldn't mind; but--it's a PHONE! It should function well, as a PHONE, without me having to hack the damn thing just to get it to work.

If I open the telephone, guess what? I'M CALLING SOMEBODY. There's no excuse for my stored numbers not to pop up by default. Make me re-program the device to default to a web browser or a Tetris session, and I wouldn't mind. Because it's a phone; asking it to do some non-phone task might conceivably be a few clicks back.

Incidentally, I've found that clicking "down" on the navigation nexus mysteriously materializes my stored numbers. Up to this point, I've avoided the "iDrive" toggle on my phone, because every time I've ever touched it, I've launched a WAP session or some other feature I'm probably getting charged by-the-second for until I can figure out how to terminate it.

Maybe I need a Jitterbug. Made by Samsung, the same people that made my phone. [/Andy Rooney]

[HungLikeJesus]

If you compare it to standard push-button home phones from 20-years ago, the features you need to access (dial - make phone call) are essentially identical. Those phones didn't store phone numbers, so you had to look at the wall where you wrote the number and manually dial it.

You could use the same method and be no worse off.

[Flint]

But it's not 20 years ago. It's today, and we have the technology for it to be designed better.

At work, where I run a digital radiology system, I don't accept processes that are "at least as good" as when we had film--the new technology we have is supposed to INCREASE our efficiency. It's a massive farce perpetrated by shoddy system designers that have us expecting technology to be hard to use. If it's hard to use, it's designed badly.

[Cloud]

you're making an assumption that it's a "phone." It's not really--it's a mobile communication device.

[Sundae]

Nope, I'm with Dar.
I've read the manual for all of my phones and set them up the way that pleases me.

Left click takes me to my alarm (I used to use my phone as a back up device when I was having trouble getting up) right click to my contacts. Before I got a digital camera my left click was camera. I think my centre button is call log, but I don't use my phone much now.

[Undertoad]

The feature we are discussing is usability.

The tool we are discussing is not a telephone, but a "mobile device". (Not even a "mobile communication device" Cloud - they can do a lot more than communicate)

Like most other mobile device features, you can pay more and get better usability. (But you won't have to pay that much more and you won't have to wait very long.)

The longer you call your thingie a "telephone" the longer you will be mocked by modernity.

My mobile device is Windows Mobile 6 and if I want to call Jacquelita on it I type "J" followed by the call button.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Cloud

you're making an assumption that it's a "phone." It's not really--it's a mobile communication device.

Therefore the real marketing war may break out between iPhone and Blackberry.

Motorola's problem - they don't understand any of this. Motorola still thinks in terms of a phone with resulting infighting between their hardware and software people.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

I just dial the numbers, like some sort of philistine.

I think you mean neanderthal...

[jinx]

Troglodyte. (not the D&D kind)

[smoothmoniker]

I'm very much looking forward to the arrival of Android, and the ability to program my own usability without being limited by the "settings" that some software designer decided I should have access to.

Open is good.

[dar512]

Flint's gripe is unfounded. It's very difficult to design a good user interface, especially one that you expect even the slowest of the slow to use.

I thought Flint was an IT guy. But he doesn't seem to understand conflicting design goals. Everything on the cell phone needs to be understandable and 'findable' by everyone - even folks like Flint who refuse to read manuals. That's why interface designers use menu systems. Everyone gets the concept by now and people know that if you explore the menus eventually you'll find out how to do something.

Even the simplest cell phone has a number of functions. By the time you figure in the setup, ring configuration and whatnot, there's dozens, I'm sure. So now you need a hierarchical menu to make sense of it all. The hierarchy keeps similar functions together. But a rational hierarchy means that some essential functions may be buried three levels deep in the menu tree - because that's where it logically belongs. And that function may be something you want to do all the time.

But we also want the things we do most often to be easy. That's why most user interfaces also give you a faster, if less obvious, way to do the most common things. It's why you can click on the file menu then click on the save menu -- but you can also press Ctrl^S.

"Basically, the only 'intuitive' interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned."
-- unknown

RTFM

[Flint]

Mock me all you want. The idiot driver who swerves all over the road and almost kills your family is struggling through multiple clicks to get their phone to act like a phone. It should act like a phone by default. I've already explained, multiple menus are fine to get to the extraneous features; but people don't work on spreadsheets while they're driving, they place phone calls.

If you didn't have to read a manual 10 years ago to place a phone call, but now you do, that's where the failure is. It's designed so bad that you can't figure it out.

I'll repeat myself, because this is important: anyone who tells you that newer technology is harder to figure out has designed a shitty interface.

And, yes, the device I'm talking about is a PHONE. If a service goes down on one of my servers, I receive an email on a small, cheap, and reliable alphanumeric pager. But, if a human being needs to speak with me, they call my PHONE.