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

[Eric Reiss]

I've been researching button layouts, shapes, and sizes the past
month. So this article was just up my alley.

What I can share is that manufacturers have an incredible talent for
reinventing the wheel. In other words they frequently fail to learn
from past experiences.

One minor anomaly that might amuse you is that the keypad on one of
the earliest Motorola StarTac telephones, the 5200, shifted the
alphabet keys so that ABC were located on 1, DEF were on 2, etc. The
advantage was avoiding having four letters on the 7 and 9 keys. But
Motorola soon reverted to the standard layout that has been in
popular use for over 80 years.

Just think what would have happened if Motorola had insisted on
maintaining their own standards when WAP and text messaging came into
popular use a few years later.

On the other hand, phones like the Nokia 2110 (1993) established the
basic key layout we still find on mobile phones today.

Best,
Eric

E-Reiss & Associates
Copenhagen, Denmark
www.e-reiss.com

---- Original Message ----
From: john.benjamin at gmail.com
To: tOM at abacurial.com
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Summer Reading - User Behavior Drove Phone 
>Design
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 18:55:58 -0400

>I thought that was a good question. So I googled and came up with 
>this:
>
>http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/frequently_asked_questions.htm
>l#keyPads
>
>Turns out to be a rationale similar to that which resulted in our
>beloved QWERTY keyboard layout, a story we've probably all heard
>already:
>
>http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html
>
>
>J
>
>
>
>On 8/10/06, tOM Trottier <tOM at abacurial.com> wrote:
>> Dear Katie,
>>
>> So why did the phoneco choose a number button setup diametrically 
>the opposite of calculators?
>>
>> tOM
>>
>> On Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 9:46,
>> Katie Ware <kcoleware at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > 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
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