[Sigia-l] Cell phone error states (was: Scanning)

[Will Parker]

On Jan 28, 2007, at 11:48 AM, Lee Hsieh wrote:
>>
>> Will Parker wrote:
>> What's the definition of 'CLI' in this case? None of the definitions
>> at www.acronymfinder.com seem to fit.
>>
> ...command line interface. although in the case of the phone model,  
> it's
> not  a true cli as their are icons and such.

I wouldn't call a graphical UI system a 'CLI', since those are  
traditionally regarded as text-based and reliant on the user's  
ability to recall arcane and type in commands like "grep '[0-9]\{3\}- 
[0-9]\{4\}'".

The idea of a phone with a CLI is of such Lovecraftian* proportions  
that I may not sleep for the next three days. But then, I'm not a  
Linux fan.

(* H.P. Lovecraft - If you're not familiar with American horror  
literature, think Stephen King cubed.)

> In the case of mobile devices, how well alternate paths, errors so  
> forth
> are handled on the software side also contribute to the user
> experience.

Of course -- but in most cases, one _hopes_ that most of the  
unimportant-to-the-user stuff is well-hidden and handled behind the  
scenes, so I assumed that you were referring to the engineering  
problems, not the user interaction

> The interactions must factor in limations in signal
> strength, power levels and low resolution displys.  Within this  
> context,
> the arcane error messages sometimes encoutered on Windows is  
> unnacceptable.

Since the local press and Engadget have reported extensively on the  
project, I can talk about my one glancing brush with cell-phone  
system design. About a year ago, I did some contract work with T- 
Mobile on their upcoming cell phone service that uses either standard  
GSM or WiFi as the transport mechanism for voice data.

The overt design imperative is to improve and extend areas of cell  
phone signal coverage. The cell phone constantly searches for better  
signal strength, whether via standard GSM or via WiFi, and  
automatically and 'silently' switches the phone  to the transport  
mechanism to the stronger signal. The process whereby signals are  
switched and monitored are quite complex, and therefore potential  
error states abound.

My job was to write understandable documentation for end-users and  
support techs. There were about 43 error states that could be  
registered at the phone, and nobody had gotten around to really  
finalizing that particular portion of the interface design. They were  
somewhere in the Neolithic period of UxD :

	"Uhhh, hello? My cell phone is displaying error code
	oh-ex-7739-dash-29 whenever I try to make a call while I'm at
	the Starbucks on Boylston Avenue. No, I'm home right now."

I was able to influence (I hope) the error displays by pointing out  
that all we (and the customer) cared about was getting the error  
fixed and who was going to fix it. After I got that point across, we  
were able to collapse the 43 errors down to about six errors that  
needed to be displayed on the phone. The rest could be handled by  
having the tech support people look at the customer's records.

>> Has there been any discussion of cam-phone users "stealing" content
>> by scanning it at the magazine stand instead of buying the magazine?

> Not that i'm aware of.  Keep in mind the barcodes , which dont look  
> like
> th striped ones in the U.S., are about 1-2" square and contain limited
> data.

I've seen those used for content delivery as well. Wikipedia has a  
full write-up on 2D barcode formats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 
Bar_code#2D_barcodes)

> They're meant to act as vehicles to exchange snippets of info or
> sample media types.  Now what's interesting is that there has been  
> some
> talk  about holographic barcodes where different wavelengths of light
> can be scanned as seperate layers of data.  This would significantly
> increase the amount of data that could captured in the  same area.

That's starting to sound like a technology in search of a problem.  
Once you get past a certain amount of data, it would seem to be  
simpler to encode a unique URL in some machine-readable format and  
put the data at that URL.


- Will
Will Parker
wparker at ChannelingDesign.com

"The only people who value your specialist knowledge are the ones who  
already have it." - William Tozier