I use my phone to communicate predominantly through text messages. The main reasons I use it to call people are either to talk to my parents, or to communicate about meeting somewhere/picking someone up, etc. The most bothersome times for both texts and phone calls are when I am doing work, in class, and sleeping.
The first feature I propose is that the phone would know what setting I am in… the library, class, outside, at home, etc. This would help determine whether a person should text or call me. Texts are often more bothersome because texting back and forth requires more attention than a quick phone call. However, I’m obviously not going to answer a phone call in class. It would be helpful to have different settings for different things on my schedule, or even for the phone to communicate my schedule to other people. My dad often forgets when I have class and calls me anyway. If the phone could let him know I was in class, he would either text me if it was important, or call me once he knew I was not in class. This also means I don’t have to bother writing the “in class, call you later” text message.
However, as we talked about in class, there are exceptions that cause social-technical gaps. For example, what if your phone recognizes that you are in the library, but you are in the café, so it would be acceptable to answer your phone? In terms of ambiguity, just having the phone turn itself to the text message only setting during class may cause people to think I am ignoring their calls, being impolite, etc. Having the phone let other people know my basic schedule, ie. Class times, meetings, this ambiguity can initially be reduced since people know I will not answer the phone if I am in class.
Relating to this, it would also be useful to have the phone know which people are a higher priority at different times—who I would most likely want or need to talk to. We talked about how people occupy different roles, and the phone would recognize not only class schedules, but times in which we are in different roles. When I am studying, but waiting for someone to study with me, the phone would only ring if they called me. Or, if it is 3 AM and I am sleeping, the phone would only ring if my parents called because it would most likely be an emergency. However, it is obvious that it would be very difficult for a technology to truly know what you are doing, where you are and what role you are in at any given time.
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Everyone seems to mention that the new smart phone should recognize where they are and set to vibrate or turn the ringer off. However, I like how you extend this to involve a text message that tells the caller specifically what your doing, eliminating the need for you to write it. I also like how it recognizes that at 3 AM it should ignore all calls, unless your parents are calling in which case its probably an emergency. Unfortunately this doesn't anticipate that perhaps an unknown caller may be calling with an emergency (ie. a police officer or something like that).
ReplyDeleteI do believe a sensor to detect where you are and correct the setting of your phone would be useful. However, it is also possible that such a phone might set it to a setting you don't always want. I.e. at one time when you're at home you might want it to be on ring, but another on vibrate. Knowing which people are higher on the priority list would definitely be convenient, one would just have to hope that other contacts don't find out about their rank in priority or not understand why their communication isn't getting through.
ReplyDeleteI came a cross most of the same issues in that the phone is not context aware as to what messages it lets through when. If there was a way to display presence so that users who are trying to reach you can decide whether to call you, text you, email or wait, it would drastically reduce the amount of phone tag and awkwardly long SMS exchanges. A way to set priorities on your call would be an easy way to accomplish this task but would require extra steps from the user.
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