When the Rules Change

As Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin approached the moon’s surface for a landing, their computer suddenly produced a master alarm, flashing a warning light and displaying the error code 1202. The code was not familiar to the astronauts, so the experts at mission control in Houston had to look at their handbooks and find out what it meant. It was an overload error—caused by the landing radar producing more data than the computer could digest—but it was not fatal, and the mission was still a go. The same kind of alarms went off again a few more times during descent, but as we know, they made it safely down.

While working on the UI design of the first Series 30-style phones in 1997, we realized that our call handling was not as competitive as other manufacturers’. We looked into the reasons, tossed around ideas for improvement, and implemented two major changes, one of which was the call menu. The UI for call handling went through a remarkable change. The new call menu brought call-handling features available into the softkey label on screen during a call.

During a call, the call menu in Series 30-style phones is accessed by the options softkey. Previous phones also had a call menu, but it was situated in the middle of the main menu. True, it was logically where all other menu items were, but the situation in which users have to access call-handling features is fundamentally different from a situation where users can take their time and browse. The usability tests of call handling were interesting at this point. When we gave the users the task of setting up a conference call, or making a second call and returning to the original call, the test users initially regarded these tasks as impossible to accomplish. Afterward they were surprised at being able to carry out the tasks successfully with the help of the call menu. We were relieved to have made it down safely.

Not all Nokia phones have dedicated volume keys. In those that don’t, the speaker volume is adjusted by manipulating the up and down arrows (i.e., the scrolling keys) during a call.[*] It is easy to do once you know about it, but many users have problems finding this feature in their phones. They try to find it but can’t—and this applies even to some dealers! The feature can’t be tried without a call; when the phone is idle, the scroll keys open the list of names in the phonebook instead of volume control. During the course of a call people do not explore new possibilities with the phone—they speak.

Menu solutions, like most other UI solutions, aim at helping users learn new operations and find new functions by exploring the product with what they’ve learned.. The core user interface does not require users to learn anything by heart. These working assumptions follow the well-known UI design principle: Rely on recognition, not recall. Everything is presented to the user, who need only choose.

During a call, however, the rules change. Users do not feel relaxed enough to study the user interface. Conversation occupies their attention. Perhaps shifting one’s attention from the interlocutor to the device feels impolite; perhaps the fear of failing to best the UI while someone is on line to witness it makes users uneasy. Or perhaps simultaneous human–human and human–machine interaction simply leads to a cognitive overload. Whatever the reason is, interactions required during a call have to be right on the top of the user interface. They must be realized with dedicated keys, or with a menu directly accessible from the idle screen.[†]

[*]Or in Series 60 using the left and right arrows during a call.

[†]The problems of operating the phone during calls as described here are related to basic phones. Smartphones and communicator products are designed specifically to enable fluent operation of different applications in parallel with calls.



Mobile Usability(c) How Nokia Changed the Face of the Mobile Phone
Mobile Usability: How Nokia Changed the Face of the Mobile Phone
ISBN: 0071385142
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 142

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