After paying close attention to how I use my cell phone (aka blackberry) for a couple of days, I noticed several bothersome things. First of all, I realized how addicted I am to it. Part of this addiction comes from the way the phone notifies you of a new message or missed call. Not only does the little LED light on the corner of the phone continue to flash until you address the notification, but the phone also displays asterisks in two other places on the display. All of these notifications give me such anxiety! And people wonder why the blackberry has developed the name the Crackberry?
Because my phone enables me to reply to emails right when they arrive, I feel obligated to do so. This drives my attention away from what I am currently doing at the time. Lastly, the alarm on the phone has caused me to oversleep a few times. When the alarm goes off, a little screen pops up that says SNOOZE for 5 minutes or dismiss alarm. When your eyes are barely open it is really hard to differentiate in between the two different buttons, which has caused me to wake up extremely late in various different occasions.
The ideal “smart” phone would solve these problems. First of all, it would give users more explicit notification settings. Therefore, the user could say how the light reacts and where notifications appear on the screen. In addition, it would be nice for my phone to know exactly what I am doing. Therefore, based on what you are doing, it would turn off certain features of your phone. For example, my blackberry messenger service would be disabled during class since I do not have the willpower to do so. This idea could be extended to the alarm feature. The phone could know when you were actually awake and out of bed.
A few socio technical gaps exist in my design. According to Ackerman, ambiguity often causes a social technical gap. If someone’s email or phone capabilities are disabled and someone is trying to reach this person, that person might feel as if they are being ignored, which is not polite. To resolve this issue, the phone could send automated messages informing others of the individual’s status. Furthermore, there are always exceptions to situations. What if someone wants to sleep in but his or her alarm refuses to turn off? Or what if they need email capabilities during a very important meeting? The phone would need preferences as an easy way to create these exceptions and offer the user some flexibility.
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I definitely need something that disables by texts during class, and the alarm feature would be helpful as well. I sometimes have the opposite problem that since I can't really read the phone and I'm just hurrying to turn my alarm off, I press snooze when I actually get out of bed. Not the biggest deal in the world, but it's pretty annoying to me and my roommates when my alarm goes off when I'm out of bed, especially if I'm not in my room.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it could also know the urgency of you waking up on time, ie-- it would know whether you are waking up at 9:30 because you have class at 10:10 or because you think you should probably just get up then. For cases like getting up for class it would know that it was much more important for you to wake up on time.
I have know others who are addicted to their blackberry, ie that little light somehow beckons people to pick it up and check it. The alarm feature is "bad interface design" for the reasons you states, no barely awake person could differentiate between those two little button. For some reasons, many alarms and phones thinks people can do this, especially sleep deprived students. Great post, I really enjoyed reading it. Good connection to the Ackerman articles.
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