Assignment #6 - Peter Clain

In using my cell-phone last week, I discovered a few issues with cell-phone design that still need addressing. The main issue is that the phone does a poor job of communicating my current role, or state, to anyone that wishes to talk to me. I may be lazily using my computer at home, I may be in class taking notes, or I may only wish to talk to a select set of people. In only one of these cases am I fully available to deal with incoming phone calls, and my phone offers no way to communicate this information to others. In a FtF meeting in any of these situations, my current state would be obvious, but the phone is a rigid system that does not allow for exceptions.

The solution here, I propose, would be to make the phone more like instant messaging. IM comes equipped with a variety of status settings that are triggered automatically, and this allows for much more visibility in dealing with others. When I am running full-screen programs, for example, my IM switches to busy, and when I am inactive for a certain amount of time, it switches to away. The phone could trigger these messages automatically through movement or exposure to light, but they could be turned on manually, as well (if the phone were exposed to light, for example, and not in my pocket, I would most likely be available). In addition, to limit communication with a select set of people, the phone could afford separate contact lists that could be set to on or off by the user (such as friends, work, etc.).

While this redesign would solve some issues, there are still social-technical gaps in the design. Ackerman defines the social-technical gap as “the divide between what we know we must support socially and what we can support technically,” and while the proposed solutions attempt to alleviate some of the problems caused by this gap, there are still potential problems. The largest problem would be the system’s inability to handle nuance. While the automatic setting allows for a more graceful shift between roles, it does not allow for exceptions. I could be in a situation that would normally appear busy when I was actually available, or vice versa. A solution to this would be to give more control to the user, but this would require users to be explicit in setting the device. Offering more ambiguous settings could, potentially, alleviate this.