I think my biggest telephone usability gripe is that you can't retract one mis-pressed digit, vs. starting over completely.

I also remember (this may no longer be true) a story Martina Navratilova once told on Letterman, that she needed to call the emergency number from a phone booth in the UK, and IIR she said the number there was not 911, but three high digits like 999; and the phone was a rotary dial.

Also, a personal anecdote. Years ago a colleague here in NY needed a number phoned in from a colleague in the UK, over a weekend; we had no direct dial numbers in the company, but the voice response system assured all callers they could access anyone's voice mailbox by first dialing the first letter of the last name. The colleague in the UK stared at his phone in disbelief, complete confusion, since lettered keypads had not arrived.

Lastly, an HBR cartoon I can only mention (I couldn't find it online, sorry): a person is listening to the VRS: "If you would like to press 'one', press 'one'. If you would like to press 'two'..."

None of this has any value. Sorry. I felt the need to type.

Posted by: Frank on March 4, 2003 11:00 PM

---

 

I can't see the difference between phones and PC/network accounts that enforce monthly new passwords (with the same nerving restrictions). They force you to write down your password, to build memorizable passwords or to harass customer service with passwort recovery. Not really desirable incidents.

Posted by: Gerald on March 5, 2003 11:38 AM

---

 

Gerald, you're right, there isn't much of a difference except for the fact that the aggravation is compounded by the use of voice menus :).

On another note, the company for which I work for got this link through the grapevine and thought for a second that I was actually bashing them. I explained that this was merely a usability issue. They then explained to me that the password rules were a means to protect themselves against voicemail fraud. Yeah, voicemail fraud sucks too, but at the end of the article, even the specialist says that it can be easily prevented by simply using a better (longer) password. Said nothing 'bout changing passwords over and over again.

Posted by: Francis Wu on March 5, 2003 01:43 PM

---

 

Frank, most cordless and cell phones allow you to type and edit the phone number before actually placing the call. Great feature, although I have to admit I sometimes forget to click "send" or "call" or whatever dial button is.

Posted by: Francis Wu on March 5, 2003 01:49 PM

---

 

An example of how password rules can be self-defeating - at one place I worked everyone wound up using passwords of the form MMMYYYY, e.g. MAR2003 - so for all but a few says each month everyone was using the same password.

If it's important, use biometrics, e.g. iris patterns (see http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/27/1046064145169.html, posted in webword on Sat 1 Mar 2003. Otherwise let people choose passwords they can remeber and don't force frequent changes.

Posted by: Philip Chalmers on March 5, 2003 05:39 PM

---

 

Frank,

Your first comment above led me to wonder why the UK's emergency service number is 999, while the USA uses 911. In the days when emergency calls were first introduced, 999 would have been the most time consuming to dial, since all phones had a rotary dial and the 9 required a full turn of the dial. A clear usability problem, no?

The answer is that the UK introduced emergency calls to a specific number in 1937. This was the first such service in the world, but it faced problems with the relatively primitive telephone technology of the time. They were going to use 111, but it was found that this number was often dialed by faulty telephones. They also considered 222, but this was the number of one of the biggest exchanges in London, which would have had to be closed down. They eventually decided on 999 because it was easy to remember, not already in use for anything else and almost impossible to mis-dial. Anyone who remembers the old rotary-dial phones will have had the experience of fingers slipping from the dial before you intended, resulting in a 3 being dialled instead of a 4 (or whatever). Fortunately, they haven't been used in the UK for years now.

There's a usability case study somewhere in this.

Posted by: Alan Fisher on March 6, 2003 05:16 AM

---