"[Design] a smart telephone that incorporates a visual interface
for managing voice mail. The interface is displayed on a built-in, 4- by 5-inch,
color LCD screen…" "Create a believable, compelling design for the MessagePhone."
VisiBell (a fictional phone company) seeks to deliver a product called MessagePhone that integrates a 4x5" LCD. While the problem statement does not explicitly say whether this product is a desk phone or a portable phone, for the purpose of this assignment we will assume the former since most advanced phones are connected to office phone systems(e.g. PBX). If this were a real project we would of course clarify with VisiBell what type of product they had in mind. Therefore our market is corporate phone system purchasers and our target user is the office voicemail user.
Nearly all users of voicemail likely would agree with Jakob Nielsen when he said:
"...you shouldn't be forced to access [voicemail] by sitting through a long, linear recital of recorded messages; scrolling through a visual listing of messages would be more efficient." [1]
While a number of issues can be found with existing voicemail through heuristic evaluation of it, AT&T Labs-Research through several studies provides us with a more solid foundation from which we can build a new design. The paper [2] presented at CHI 2000 offered an in-depth analysis of a previous work study by AT&T [3] on 782 active users of a typical voicemail system for 21 days.
The study identified four key user problems summarized here:
Scanning: The ability to quickly prioritize new messages and to locate saved messages. The linear nature of existing voicemail makes this process difficult.
Information Extraction: The process of extracting important contact information from messages (e.g. Name, Phone) or determining intent and action items. This often involves relistening to the same message.
Status Tracking: Often times voicemail messages contain actions that the user must follow up on (e.g. Call backs). However a typical voicemail system has no way of informing users of unresolved action items short of them calling the system back.
Archive Management: Given their access strategies, most users' archives consist of a backlog of undischarged messages as well as a store of saved valuable messages. Therefore users must periodically go through and "clean-up".
Finally, we should remember that voicemail is a means of communication and not an end in and of itself. In other words voicemail should help people get their jobs done not create additional work for people to use and maintain.
As a guiding principle, it is imperative that in improving the management of voicemail we not degrade the user's ability to use the product as a phone. If we break the basic interaction a user expects from a phone, the improvements on the more complex features will be worthless. We will limit the domain of this design to voicemail management and will assume that basic features of the phone work as they do typically unless otherwise specified (e.g. picking up the handset and punching 7 number keys places a call).
Joe walks into his office in the morning and notices on his MessagePhone that he has 2 new messages. He clicks the play button is prompted for his password and the first message begins playing. Realizing it is an important client he presses the "callback" button to re-dial the number immediately. Once he's done with call, the phone notes that he called back and the date/time. He decides to flag the message to follow-up later since he was only able to get the client's voicemail.
After returning for her weekly sales meeting, Sally is pressed for time. She notices that her phone has 4 new messages but she only wants to hear them if they are from her important clients. She quickly scans the list of messages, that based on Caller-ID, show her who has called and decides they can all wait until later.
Harrison manages a real estate office and often gets voicemail in regards to properties his agents are trying to sell. With MessagePhone he is able to easily forward messages to the appropriate agent's personal voicemail. His old phone system also allowed him to forward but he was never able to figure it out.
Play new messages
View a list of new messages (and the number of them)
View a list of flagged messages (and the number of them)
Play selected message
Delete message
Rewind message (5 seconds, or all the way)
Advance message (2 seconds)
Skip to the next message (when playing linearly)
Flag a message to be followed up
Mark a flagged message completed
Call back message sender
Add Phone Number to Speed Dial or Phonebook
Change Voicemail Options (Greeting, Name, Password)
Note that no "save" or "archive" use case is listed above. Since there is no difference between previously listened to messages and saved messages the distinction is removed. Status can be simplified to "new", "flagged", and "old ".
Also the structure of the voicemail store will not have any folders or areas and will instead opt for a single store. The introduction of a storage structure reduces visibility of messages and adds a layer of abstraction that is not necessary in this case.
We should remember that a user's goal is NOT to manage a voicemail system but rather to communicate with others. The phone and voicemail system should enable the user to achieve the goals of initiating and responding to voice communications in a timely manner. Most people have a job to do outside the telephone and so the quicker the phone can help them get their communications done the sooner they get back to doing other work.
In brainstorming the general hardware interface of the phone two models emerged:
PHONE
A: Pros:
Cons:
|
PHONE
B: Pros:
Cons:
|
While Phone A definitely has some interesting potential Phone B is the most viable as a product. By taking a more evolutionary approach current users of phones can easily transition to the product without learning a whole new user interface all at once. The more advanced voicemail management features can be learned with time but the basic functionality of the phone is available to the user instantly. Phone B also adheres closer to the original request by VisiBell by delivering a phone that manages voicemail and not a "super phone".
The five colored function keys shown above correspond to the colored button shown on the LCD screen. In this way the functions of the buttons can be changed by the software but the association is closely tied based on proximity and color. Also where appropriate the color of the key corresponds with an action (e.g. red for delete and clear). When possible closely associated keys on different screens should also share the same button, for example "dial" and "call back" both share the green key. The Jog Wheel is used for scrolling to select items in a list. This physical metaphor will hopefully resonate with users better than a simple up and down buttons. The dialpad and basic phone keys are identical to the typical desk phone as it is imperative that anyone be able to walk up to the phone for the first time and dial.
When the phone is inactive for a period of time (e.g. 10 minutes) it returns to its main screen shown above. In order to protect the privacy of the voicemail user, by default, the phone will return to this screen. Consequently when a user first walking into their office in the morning their goal is to determine if there are important voicemail message or flagged follow-up items. The above screen helps the user achieve his goals by providing the summarized information they need to know, primarily if they have new or flagged messages. Pushing the "View Voicemail" key will prompt the user for their password and then the voicemail management screen (shown below) will appear.
Above shows a sample of what the voicemail management screen looks like. By presenting the phone number, receival information, and indicating new messages, users are better able to "scan" for important messages or retrieve past ones. The Action taken column aims to help with "status tracking" another key user complaint with voicemail. The phone will keep track of when phone numbers are called back, when messages are listened to or shipped, and when they have been marked for follow-up. "Information Extraction" is also minimized by providing the phone number and ability to with one key press, call the person back. Note the simplified language used on the received date, using today and yesterday when appropriate and otherwise showing the day of the week instead of simply the date. The phone numbers listed are based on Caller-ID, if no number is provided "Unknown" is shown instead. Perhaps corporate phone system implementations might also show a name or extension in addition to the phone number. See alternate showing names included.
Once the user selects the message and clicks play the following screen appears. It displays more detailed information about the message and caller. A brief one week history of the caller is shown in order to provide the user with a better context. This reflects the nature of many voicemail users that end up following many voicemail threads often times never connecting in a real-time conversation [3]. The length of the message is also shown along with a spatial representation of where in the message is currently being played. The Jog Wheel also functions as Reverse and Advance.
When a user starts to push the analog dialing pad on the phone, the numbers appear on the LCD screen. They should be large enough to read from a few feet away which is often the case in an office environment (e.g. user is dialing a phone number that is on their computer). If the handset is already picked up then once an adequate number of digits are present the phone dials. However if the handset is in the holster, the user can use the dial button shown below to initiate a speakerphone call. Also the backspace key allows them to change a miss typed number and clear lets them start over all together. The flag button also helps the user follow-up in the event the line is busy or their contact person is unavailable.
On the screen during the phone call date and time are shown since often that is handy during conversation. This screen can also be used during the phone call to simplify historically challenging tasks such as placing a call on hold, initiating a 2nd phone call, conference calling, etc. While these would be handled in an eventual design, they are out of the scope of this project.
Due to the limited scope of this assignment a detailed design refinement is impractical since the interaction framework is not fully complete. Ideally more detailed scenarios could be employed here to further refine the design. A number of refinements occurred throughout the course of the design I'd like to note.
Color-Keyed Function buttons: In order to better associate the buttons with the descriptions on the LCD I decided to color-key them. In doing so some of the button placements were reorganized so that the delete and clear keys were located in the "red" position.
Additional Lines of Text: Initial designs only provided enough room to view five messages. The AT&T usability study found that people received 8.7 messages a day on average with power users at about 18.7 message per day. Therefore the number of messages the user could view at a time needed to be increased. The existing design allows for 12 messages and perhaps an option could allow users to shrink the font size down to display even more.
This assignment was interesting and challenging it that it aimed to revisit a ubiquitous product that has not evolved much from its initial design. I hope it offers an insight as to how I go about design. If this were a real project I would create a prototype of the interface using HTML or Flash. It would help us in walking through more detailed scenarios. I would be happy to talk with you more about my design and design process.
Final thought... "Basically, the problem is that the [phone] systems have more features and less feedback. Suppose all telephones had a small display screen...." Donald A. Norman [4]
1. Nielsen, Jakob. http://www.useit.com/papers/telephone_usability.html
2. Whittaker, Steve, et. al. "Jotmail: a
voicemail interface that enables you to see what was said". New York:
ACM Press, 2000.
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/332040.332411
3. Whittaker, Steve, Julia Hirschberg, and Christine
H. Nakatani. "All Talk and All Action: Strategies for Managing Voicemail
Messages". New York: ACM Press, 1998.
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/286498.286732
4. Norman, Donald A. "The Design of Everyday Things" pp27-28. New York: Doubleday, 1988.