Saturday morning, my alarm went off at 8:10. I DID NOT NEED TO BE AWAKE AT 8:10 ON A SATURDAY MORNING. BUT, I forgot to reset my alarm from my 9:05 Friday morning class. Similarly, it went off at 10:20 am on Wednesday morning when I had a 9:05 because I forgot to reset it from Tuesday morning when I have an 11:40. This proves to be an issue for me at least once a week.
In addition to the alarm waking me up too early, phone calls and text messages early in the morning and late at night are often disturbing.
Another problem is the tendency for me to forget to turn the ringer off. Then often times, when I do remember to turn the ringer off, I forget to turn it back on when necessary. I don’t feel the vibrate in my bag when it’s sitting on the ground.
A smart phone with a few technological advances could easily solve these problems.
The smartphone would have the capability to set an individual alarm for each day of the week- that way we can set our alarm one time in the beginning of the semester based on our class schedule. This feature would simply be an option; so for those that need to wake up at the same time everyday, they would only set the “master” alarm.
In addition, this smartphone would have a “sleep mode”, from about midnight- until your alarm goes off. In this sleep mode, it would automatically be on silent and when people call, it would tell them that I am temporarily unavailable until the time that my alarm is set to. In addition, the smartphone would sense the volume of the surroundings to determine the appropriate ringer. This would need to be extremely sensitive, as it would need to differentiate quiet and loud surroundings even if it was in your bag.
The social technical gap, or “the divide between what we know we must support socially and what we can support technically" (Acerman, 170), undoubtedly exists in this new smartphone. For example, if you happen to be awake earlier then your alarm, and you miss a phone call because your phone is on “sleep mode”. The technical system does not recognize your sleeping habits on individual nights. In addition, if there is an emergency, the technology does not recognize the NEED for someone to reach you. Social Technical gaps, in my opinion, will always exist, as human habits change and can not always be recognized by a machine.
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Nice post. I agree with you that users should be able to set the alarm times on cell phones for individual days of the week. Every night before I go to sleep, I have to set the alarm on my phone for the following morning. This alarm feature would reduce the social technical gap that is created by the exceptional circumstances of each day requiring a different wake-up time. Sensing the volume of surroundings to determine the appropriate ringtone volume is an interesting feature, although it would introduce a social technical gap from ambiguity. For example, if there are a few seconds of loud noise before a phone call, then the phone may set the ringer to high volume if a call is received at that time. However, the social technical gap cannot be removed completely, just minimized which is a good start. Overall, nice job!
ReplyDeleteI have the same problems with my alarm on my phone. Inevitably, I forget to change the time for the next day and am either woken too early or too late. I would love if my phone had the capability you propose.
ReplyDeleteI think the absolute best suggestion I've seen from this assignment is yours about the phone automatically determining the ringer volume based on its surroundings and sound volumes. It's one thing to set a vibrate schedule based on your class schedule, but when I'm in my room I don't need my phone to be on loud. It can be on soft. At a hockey game though, for example, I need the phone to be on loud so I can hear it through all of the screaming. Although social technical gaps will always exist, I hope technology progresses enough and becomes flexible enough to account for your proposals.