Personally, the most bothersome problem that arises from cell phone usage is receiving calls at inopportune times. There are many situations when I don't want to get a call, such as when I'm sleeping, when I'm focused on some task, or when I'm in a class. On the other side of the issue, I'm often frustrated when someone I'm calling doesn't pick up and I have no idea why. Thus, I propose two features that would alleviate both of these issues.
My first idea is a "status" option, that you can set to various settings such as "Busy" or "Sleeping", that is broadcast to others via some wireless connection. This system would automatically let potential callers know how available you are, before they choose to dial you.
Instead of letting others know beforehand, you can also present them your status when they call you. My second feature would be custom answering-machine messages: e.g. "I can't pick up because I'm in a meeting right now. I'll be available at 4PM." They would work much like AIM Away messages, by letting others know why and when you are unavailable for calling. You'd record a custom message for your current situation, and set it on so that all calls will go straight to voicemail with this message.
Socio-technical gaps arise from the level of gradiation within these situations. In everyday life, a situation in which we don't want ANY calls from ANYbody is rare. For example, when we're busy with work, we might not want social calls from friends, but would definitely take a call from an employer. Thus, there is also variation in who we'd feel comfortable with hearing/viewing these status messages.
For the "status" feature, you may not want certain potential callers knowing what you are doing. For example, you may seem irresponsible if your phone tells your project partners that you are sleeping in the middle of the day. To fix this, the settings could be changed to a generic range of availability levels: High (Really can't be bothered), Med, Low. A socio-political gap in the second design is that there may be emergency situations where others need to reach you. In this case, you could add an option where a person's call will only go through on their second attempt, and the message instructs "If you really need to talk to me, hang up and dial again". For both features, another possible option is to grant access to this service only for people you specify (such as family and close friends), in the cases where you don't want everybody receiving these messages.
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I like that call again feature. Seems like a great way to allow people to contact you without disturbing you. Even without that feature now, knowing that someone has called me twice in a row expresses urgency. Having it so that the person only knows that you've called for the second call is very similar. I also had a similar idea to the custom answering machine messages, and I think it would be cool if they worked like AIM. Then you could type in a message, the computer could read it. This would be an easy way to modify your voicemail.
ReplyDeleteI wrote about very similar features like away messages and statuses. I found myself dealing with the social technical gaps very similarly. When faced with a contact list of people from all parts of you life, you might not want to relay the same message to all of them, and so the technology should be more vague- like what you say with a High, Med, and Low status. It's interesting to me that even though this solution seems to make the technology more rigid, the ambiguity makes it more easily applicable to our flexible social needs.
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