[Sigia-l] Summer Reading - User Behavior Drove Phone Design

[Katie Ware]

Interesting article on phone design in the '50's, and how it led to features we see today. Check out how issues surrounding wrong numbers affected design. Warning - longish, but worth it.

"Idealized Design: How Bell Labs Imagined -- and Created -- the Telephone System of the Future 
In their book, Idealized Design: How to Solve Tomorrow's Crisis...Today (Wharton School Publishing), authors Russell L. Ackoff, Jason Magidson and Herbert J. Addison build upon a simple notion. They argue that, "the way to get to the best outcome is to imagine what the ideal solution would be and then work backward to where you are today."An excerpt, based on Ackoff's experience, shows how the process worked at Bell Labs in the 1950s. "

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1540