The phone worked so well for so long. But cell phones! Cramped, overloaded with features you can't use, no feedback, difficult to read... everyone has their own list. It shouldn't be like this, lots of money and talent go into the amazing form factors that cell phones have become.
Why don't we get these things right? Here is my plea to phone designers. Feel free to send me additional suggestions for making this ubiquitous technology great. Or better yet, send me the name of a phone that does all of these things.
Providing feedback
Push button phones (of the sitting on the desk/hanging on the wall variety) beeped a different sound with each number, loud enough so that you knew when you hit it.
The buttons on the old Hewlett Packard calculator made a satisfying click you could feel when you pressed it far enough to register your number. Why couldn't we augment this with a small light under the button or keypad that flashed when we pressed successfully.
With a clam shell phone, opening it tells the phone that I am ready to use it. Why not take advantage of that information and offer me something (the last number I called?, the phone book number list?...) If the phone is off and the power button is under the clam shell a simple click (not a press and hold) should turn it on. Or better yet if the phone is off and I open it, turn it on!
Screen use
Every pixel is sacred. Use them all and subordinate the screen completely to the current use. So make the number that you are dialing as big as will fit. When you dial/press keys, fill the screen with each digit and then revert to showing the current string of numbers. This way you get lots of clear (anti-aliased) feedback for each number as you dial/press.When the phone is off dedicate the whole screen to the time (or alternate it with the date). If there is additional room, put something useful there (like the the cell phones number!). Who calls themselves? I have taken to printing out my number and taping it to the back of my phone. Remember when all phones had a little strip of paper under plastic that showed its number.
Once a call has connected show both the callers number and my own, so that I can easily respond to the question, "What's your number?"
When the phone "rings" in addition to vibrate, if the phone has a good display; flash the display. A smoothly oscillating glow would look cool.
The shortcut
The best UI idea, which you see everywhere once you know about it, is to offer to do what the user just did, again.* This works because people so often want to do what they just did. Getting the granularity of "what they just did" right is important. But the just called list offers a perfect example.Voicemail should not be on my recent calls list. While voicemail is accomplished by making a call it doesn't really live cognitively in the same space as people-I-call, rather it's a function of the phone (the answering machine). This serves as good example of the importance of getting the cognitive map right.
I want to know who called me recently and who I called recently. These should be easily accessible, possibly driven with a scroll wheel (like the blackberry or the iPod).
The address book should have a dedicated button. And typing number keys to move through the list (2=ABC, 3=DEF, ...) should allow you not just to go to the first letter but subsequent letters when you type the numeric key again.
Voice recognition
Trigger this feature with a single button and give good feedback. A button on the side of the phone dedicated to this so that your finger rests on it when you hold the phone to your ear would be nice. Motorolla's phone before the Razr was pretty good and had a nice ability to take a read phone number and understand it without training. There is plenty of opportunity for good feedback in this feature (e.g. repeating the number quickly). For some reason the Razr went back to a previous much weaker incarnation of voice dialing.Design
- The mute button should be located near the mouth piece (obviously?!) and mute should be indicated clearly. Maybe a red light near the button that toggles the feature.
- We might want to hold this phone, albeit temporarily, between the ear and shoulder.
The phone should be rugged enough to drop to the floor, or be tossed into a back pack. I recently got the Speck case for the Treo and this really adds to the feeling that the phone can be treated with abandon. Plus it can sit on slightly angled surfaces (e.g. dashboard) without slipping to the ground.
- A single button on the outside of the phone should be able to turn off the ringer (toggle ring and vibrate). This is the single best feature of the Treo.
The clock
The phone has a clock in it. Make it a great clock! I like hands on a clock-face, alternate with the date. And provide an easy way to set alarms. Have the phone call you when the alarm goes off. This could all be internal to the phone. Or you could set alarms on the web and have them call your phone when its time. Another opportunity for that oscillating glow.Misc...
- Encourage blue tooth headsets.
- Let me use the camera, if I have to have one, while I am on the phone. Why can't I, while I am talking to someone say, "Hey look at this?"
- Synch well with my computer. No one likes having to enter names on the phone, though when I have to, make it easy to enter a name for the call that I am on currently, or the one just made.
- Make the ring loud enough.
*Even this idea can run up on the rocks as illustrated by the ill-fated adaptable menus in MS Office. Turns out that stability (especially for information that is hidden, like menus) trumps doing what you did last time. They have changed their mind for Office 12 (see The End of Personalized Menus.)
