Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: morris@jade.jpl.nasa.gov (Mike Morris) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Phone Design For Humans Message-ID:Date: 28 Sep 89 06:26:19 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: Mike Morris Lines: 85 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 415, message 1 of 5 (Andy Meijers) writes: > >A minor plea to those who design 'modern' telephone sets, esp. for >offices. >1. Make them HEAVIER, and put a nonskid base on them. As I write this, >I have just pulled my ATT-issue (came with System 8.5) sculpture off >the desk for the umpteenth time. Guess I'll end up taping it to the >desk, like many do around here. I took an old steam iron plate, contact cemented a rubber pad to it and then cemented the plate to the phone. Ugly, but it works. When people comment about it, I say "Only way I could make the new phone as usable as the old one". >2. Shape the handsets to FIT THE HUMAN HEAD! Real people do not talk >daintily holding the handset in their fingertips. They jam it on one >shoulder so they write. This worthless thing promptly shoots out of >sight if you try. A friend acquired a spare handset and gutted it, and moved the guts into a old style handset. Modular cords, etc... There's also a pad sold by some phone stores that works real good... It mounts with a peel-and-stick adhesive... >3. Don't position the cord connectors so the handset cord tangles unto >itself 2 inches from the base. (see # 1, above). Put the line cord There's a gadget sold in some phone stores, and in the Hello Direct catalog that fixes that - it's a swivel device. >where the it won't cause the phone to trip over it whenever you move >it six inches. Huh? >4. Put a button for each function! (ie, hold, transfer etc). Phones >should not require constant referral to the manual to operate; they >should be self-evident. While you're at it, make the buttons REAL, >with a click. A pox on squishy membrane switches and finger-nail-tip >size buttons a quarter inch apart. Hello the designers - are you listening? I don't mind a [SHIFT] key, if the shifted functions are the lesser used ones, as long as I can say which are the lesser used! i.e. Give us a user definable keyboard, with an overlay that can be labeled with a pencil/pen and slides into the phone behind a clear overlay. >5. Make cords that don't lose their coil in a month, or that act like >a DNA molecule and coil back on themselves, with a non-porous surface >that doesn't get filthy immediately . (That also applies to the whole >phone. Make it cleanable!) Yes Yes Yes >6. Make a ringer/bell that can be tracked by ear. In an office full of >chirping crickets, all with the speakers buried, it is often hard to >tell which one is ringing. Here's one place where I wish the rest of the world had copied Rolm - their phones had 4 different ring sounds, user selectable. On the old 500 phones you could swap gongs around (the normal phone had one high and one low, by swapping gongs in two of 3 phones you could have one normal, one high, one low). Some EKS phones can have a capacitor changed. But a selectable ring tone would take only a few bytes in a microprocessor based phone, why can't we have such an obvious thing? >I could go on for another page, but you get the idea. Fancy sculptures >may sell well in the catalog or showroom, but are often miserable for >the users. (This translates to Lo$t productivity.) It's obvious - the designers have secretaries! >Buyers: Get a thirty-day 'test-drive' clause. > >Designers: (including ATT, WECO, etc): Go back and look at the 500 and >2500 series desk sets again. There is a reason they lasted so long, >and were so widely imitated. They WORKED!!! An old saying comes to mind: Intelligence is not company policy. Mike Morris UUCP: Morris@Jade.JPL.NASA.gov ICBM: 34.12 N, 118.02 W #Include quote.cute.standard PSTN: 818-447-7052 #Include disclaimer.standard cat flames.all > /dev/null