I have joked (in a not-so-funny-way) that the reason I (an otherwise marginally capable web developer) have trouble with office phones is that there really aren't anywhere near enough buttons...

How come the button sequence to accomplish almost anything must be memorized?
How come every phone task is arcane and irrational?
How come we needed to be tutored in phone use?
I really DO think more buttons would help!

Cooper, a company begun by Alan Cooper (of The inmates are running the asylum, fame), one of the grandfathers of modern computing, seems to have taken the task seriously.

They have put together a demo for a phone that is LESS confusing. Feature rich to the point of bursting, but actually less confusing. The whole display screen - much larger than your normal phone - is a touchscreen, and it operates as a big button.

This is a phone whose touch display seems to be the siren call answering all of my unspoken phone usability fantasies. The trick they used was the age old approach of Goal Directed Methodology. Basically this approach focuses on the list the things a person wants to do at a given step, all interface work is contextual, meaning that if you are here, you may wish to accomplish this or that goal.

Here are some examples:


Here is a simple readout telling me I just made a transfer successfully. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT. Ever transferred a call and you just don't know if you hung up on the person? This screen tells you that you accomplished the task. It is a small confirmation, but it means the world to me, someone who hangs up on people when they try to put them on hold and transfers them to Hawaii when the caller only needed accounting.



Here are some obvious tasks - touch to add to conference, touch to hold, etc. In the conference call above, it does the seemingly impossible in this age of digital wizardry: it tells me who is on the call and who is waiting to be added.



Here is a voicemail listing, which DOESN'T force you to listen to your voice mail in order - you can select the ones you want to listen to first.

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At idfive we have a paper list of people in the office and their extensions, and I bet you do too. Or maybe you have some listing up on your intranet. What if that list were part of the phone? What if your contacts directory were part of your office phone, as it is with your cell phone? In the contacts directory above you press the contact's call button to make a call. Wow.

Labels: Design