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

[John Benjamin]

Sigh. I knew it was too fun to be true.

I had this image in my head of an old-school accountant in his
glasses, sweaty pits, and pocket protector, such a hardcore keypaddist
that when he first used a touch-tone phone, smoke rose up from the
keypad and a little scream could be heard coming from the plastic case
just before the thing stopped working.

Then the guys in the lab coats standing safely behind the plexiglass,
goggles down, would frantically scribble on their notepads, frown at
each other, and go back to the drawing board as the smoking ruin of a
telephone was unceremoniously dumped in a bin already overflowing with
failed efforts, and the accountant just crossed his arm, shook his
head at them and went "tut tut tut."

But no, it's just ordinary people starting to dial, stopping,
scratching their heads for a second, then hesitantly pecking out the
rest of the number for that authentic Chinese acupuncturist they
scratched out on their palms in ball-point pen at dinner with the
Johnsons last night.

Snore.

;)

J

On 8/12/06, Eric Reiss <elr at e-reiss.com> wrote:
> From: chris.fahey at behaviordesign.com
> >Doesn't it make more sense that the Bell Labs people (who were not
> >famous for any lack of smarts) might have wanted the numbers to read
> >left-to-right and top-to-bottom just like normal text?
>
> Chris is absolutely right.
>
> A short version of the Bell keypad story can be found on Wikipedia
> (at the end of this article):
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dial
>
> Basically, the first touch-tone keypads were based on adding machine
> layouts. However, user testing proved this to be confusing for the
> vast majority of people; they had never used an adding machine and
> thought the layout counter intuitive.
>
> The worry that accountants and bookkeepers would dial too fast is
> fallacious; this is the story behind the QWERTY keyboard, but not
> keypads.