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Seriously what is so bad about the Telephone UI ?
Even before the rotary, but including it up to and including the touch-tone phones the UI is a marvel. Pick up what obviously is something you would hold to your ear Hold it to your ear.
{ V N-1. Ask to be connected to your destination } { V N+1. “Dial” your destination } { V N-1, lean towards what seems like something you would speak into} Wait for one of 2 tones ( well maybe several but any but the 2 are obvious errors { IF ring tone
Wait for recipient to answer IF answers
Talk and listen Return ear thingy to cradle Its truly a remarkably successful UI which has been replicated almost exactly for 100 years+ even in systems where the potential GUI is far more complex; Later phones deviate somewhat from this model but only by adding a million other features which make the core UI harder to use ( but admittedly it is nice to watch youtube and check email on your “phone” so I live with the detraction) From: John Cowan [mailto:johnwcowan@gmail.com]
On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 5:00 PM, Bill Kearney <wkearney@gmail.com> wrote: Which is a totally irrelevant analogy. What might have limited a phone’s UI had quite a lot more to do with actual hardware limitations. What "actual hardware limitations"? There are letters on a U.S. phone dial and have been nearly forever. The bad UI was imposed to keep costs down and monopoly profits up.
True. First of all, programmers only do UI because no one will pay for properly trained designers to do it. And that, too, is a matter of keeping costs down and profits up. If people wouldn't use bad UIs, the products wouldn't sell,
but they *do* sell, so why shouldn't companies take advantage of that? -- |