[Sigia-l] SMS and phone number labeling

[Chad Jennings]

On Thursday, February 27, 2003, at 08:53  AM, Todd R.Warfel wrote:

> Perhaps the best solution to investigate is to:
> 1. Show them only the SMS compatible phone numbers
> 2. Provide them an option to display other/additional numbers (not by 
> default)

I think this is a solid approach. It makes some common sense 
assumptions for most customers (80%) and allows for adaption of the 
technology for the other 20%.

> 3. Create a system that knows whether or not a number is an SMS 
> compatible number and helps prevent the user from creating errors.

Creating system logic such as this may be possible, although definitely 
a challenge as the device needs to ship without much customization to 
many global markets including Europe and Asia. Also, we run into memory 
issues when trying to add to much code or a database of prefixes to the 
ROM.


> 1. So some real ethnographic sampling. Not from this list alone. Go 
> out into the field and find out what people are really doing, not what 
> they're saying they're doing. You might be surprised by the 
> differences.
> 2. Create a handful of personas that reflect your findings.
> 3. Make assumptions based on your findings, weed out the "edge-cases" 
> and build it.

In our secondary and up-front guerilla research we did find that people 
tended to misclassify (from the systems POV, not theirs) phone numbers 
for a number of reasons. However, people did tend to send nearly all 
SMS messages to only a handful of people (3-5) or only a single person 
(usually spouse/spouse or boyfriend/ girlfriend situation).  These 
frequently used numbers were classified correctly in most all cases.

Thanks!
Chad
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Chad Jennings
chad at method.com

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Method
www.method.com

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