Pissing Mobile Phones!!

[Fnaar]

I feel quite techy now, cos I know what an accelerometer is, and that mine ain't working properly.

 

[Black Sheep]

Well yes. Or I could ask someone else what my number is or...

Don't you get it? It's not that it's impossible to find the number it's that it is a lot harder and less intuitive than it should be.

its the same length as a normal landline with area code - i can remember only two phone numbers, one is my mobile and the other is my parent's house.

For sixty-years your telephone had a little card on the front with your telephone number written on it. Logical and obvious. Now, thanks to 'progress' you need a black belt in sudoku to figure out how to find it!

I'm 25, my parent's phone has never had the number written on it in the time i've been old enough to use it / take much notice of its existance

I do blame the nerds. It's just like the classic situation with video recorders when they first came out. The things could record TV shows months away, but none of them ever did because the twats who designed them gave zero thought to usability. Most were covered in rows of tiny buttons which looked identical and had to be pressed in some complex secret order before the machine would comply with your wishes. Although one could never be one-hundred percent sure it actually would, so most people gave up and just got someone else to press the red button at the correct time in their absence.

the video recorder my dad got to replace the beta max one was brilliant, the remote had a little screen on it and you just worked through the date and time and channel (was easier to set the video to the correct channel before programming) it was like setting a digital watch and then once the information was correct on that little screen, you sent the information to the video player by pressing 'transfer'

was so simple my brother and I figured it out without the instructions at about the age of 10

And nothing has changed. Have you seen the idiot menus in many modern cars? If I wanted to change which vents the air was coming out of I used to grab a knob and turn it to the correct position, which I could do without even looking at it. Now I have to press a button numerous times whilst peering at a tiny LCD display as it scrolls through a menu until I get to the vents I want.

Sure, let the nerds invent stuff. They seem good at it, but please get a normal human being in to do the bit we interact with.

many cars still have a lot of things that are opperated by a couple of buttons, american legislation dictates that the control for something must be near the object, for example the fan controls must be near the fans themselves rendering things like BMW's I drive illegal over there.

speaking of BMW's I drive, I, as a designer hate it - it looks like a pie dish from the chip shop and is not intuitive enough to use straight away.

I was using a citroen c2 van during the summer, it took me about 8 mins in a traffic jam to learn how to set the auto door lock, make the dashboard tell me whatever i wanted it to and also fix the radio.

if i can't use the basic functions of an everyday product without looking at instructions then I feel there is a problem

 

[Mr Pig]

if i can't use the basic functions of an everyday product without looking at instructions then I feel there is a problem

Totally agree. And it's depressing that as technology improves this is one area often neglected.

However I remember years ago my sister handing me an iPod, it was the first time I'd seen one. She said "See if you can work it?" Within a few seconds I'd figured out how the menu and scroll wheel worked and was playing music. They can get it right if they want to.

Didn't Jeremy Clarkson call the BMW iDrive the "I-Crash"?

 

[fossyant]

i have it in the phonebook on the phone as 'me'

Snap......Under AA for Ant as it comes up first, but my latest number I've had for 3 years is easy to remember.....the one before I never knew.

 

[Night Train]

I do wish everyone I know would put their own number in their phones under AAAA then they would phone themselves instead of me when they are driving, clubbing, shopping, having sex or whatever that strange huffing noise was.

 

[Mr Pig]

I do wish everyone would put their number under AAAA then they would phone themselves instead of me

They would still do it, the world wants to pis you off! ;0)

 

[hackbike 666]

I don't like mobile phones but I do have a very cheap 'n cheerful Sagem My-X2 which I carry on long rides. (The rest of the time its only function is as my alarm clock!)

I've searched everywhere and I can't find a way of adding a number to its phonebook when someone calls me for the first time. I have to write their number down, then type it in on a different page.

There surely must be a way to 'Add this number to phonebook' but I can't find it!

Ditto but I bought two easy to remember numbers off of ebay so I can always remember the number if needed.

 

[yenrod]

>I'm sitting here unable to find my own phone number on my own phone no mater how hard I look!

*#100# send gets you your no. (on the screen) on vodafone

 

[Mr Pig]

*#100# send gets you your no. on vodafone

Thank you. Duh, how foolish of me to to think of trying that! ;0)

 

[Crackle]

Reading this and reading your Apple thread, I'm beginning to think you don't have much luck with technology piggy.

 

[Mr Pig]

No worse 'luck' than other people I don't think. I just like technology to serve me and not the other way around. A piece of new hardware or software that makes the task more time-consuming or difficult than it would have been before is not a good solution in my book. And iTunes fits into that category. If you're trying to do what it wants you to do it's fine, but some simple organisational tasks are a right pain to do.

 

[jiggerypokery]

I love this thread - you do know that people like me are employed to make life as hellishly difficult as possible for you mere consumer electronics suckers.

For my sins I am that man that comes up with the concept for mobile phones for a certain manufacturer, see's it all the way through demographic targeting, spec, proto, sw & hw dev, beta and then box opening - only to have you lot moan when you can't work the thing because you failed to read the one pager of instructions we gave you (so you didn't have to read the full manual) and then have another pisser because you asked for all these earth shattering technologies, aplications and features that suck battery life and make the thing far too complex to use. You then have the gall to feedback that you want something 'simple' but still moan when you do the new phone roulette at the pub table and yours is the crappest amongst those of your mates the one time you do buy the simple one you can actually use.

And my solution to all your gripes... ask your kids how it works, they will know intuitively, Believe me - my user testing is allways done by teenagers.

 

[Mr Pig]

So my children will know 'intuitively' that you need to type " *#100# send " to find out what your own phone number is?

And thank you for putting the instructions on a single piece of paper. Of course if the device genuinely was intuitive we would not need the phone-book thickness manual that also comes in the box in the first place! Or, increasingly popular amongst the nerd-herd, the CD or even on-line manual that costs you sod all to make but forces us to need yet another piece of technology just to find out how to work the first one!