Design of Everyday Things [16]
In fact, I could have retrieved the call from my office, had I acted quickly enough. The manual states: “Within your pre-programmed pick-up group, dial 14 to connect to incoming call. Otherwise, to answer any ringing extension, dial ringing extension number, listen for busy tone. Dial 8 to connect to incoming call.” Huh? What do those instructions mean? What is a “pre-programmed pick-up group,” and why do I even want to know? What is the extension number of the ringing phone? Can I remember all those instructions when I need them? No.
Telephone chase is the new game in the modern office, as the automatic features of telephones go awry—features designed without proper thought, and certainly without testing them with their intended users. There are several other games, too. One game is announced by the plea, “How do I answer this call?” The question is properly whined in front of a ringing, flashing telephone, receiver in hand. Then there is the paradoxical game entitled “This telephone doesn’t have a hold function.” The accusation is directed at a telephone that actually does have a hold function. And, finally, there is “What do you mean I called you, you called me!”
Many of the modern telephone systems have a new feature that automatically keeps trying to dial a number for you. This feature resides under names such as automatic redialing or automatic callback. I am supposed to use this feature whenever I call someone who doesn’t answer or whose line is busy. When the person next hangs up the phone, my phone will dial it again. Several automatic callbacks can be active at a time. Here’s how it works. I place a phone call. There’s no answer, so I activate the automatic callback feature. Several hours later my telephone rings. I pick it up and say “Hello,” only to hear a ringing sound and then someone else saying “Hello.”
“Hello,” I answer, “who is this?”
“Who is this?” I hear in reply, “you called me.”
“No,” I say, “you called me, my phone just rang.”
Slowly I realize that perhaps this is my delayed call. Now, let me see, who was I trying to call several hours ago? Did I have several callbacks in place? Why was I making the call?
The modern telephone did not happen by accident: it was carefully designed. Someone—more likely a team of people—invented a list of features thought desirable, invented what seemed to them to be plausible ways of controlling the features, and then put it all together. My university, focusing on cost and perhaps dazzled by the features, bought the system, spending millions of dollars on a telephone installation that has proved vastly unpopular and even unworkable. Why did the university buy the system? The purchase took several years of committee work and studies and presentations by competing telephone companies, and piles of documentation and specification. I myself took part, looking at the interaction between the telephone system and the computer networks, ensuring that the two would be compatible and reasonable in price. To my knowledge, nobody ever thought of trying out the telephones in advance. Nobody suggested installing them in a sample office to see whether users’ needs would be met or whether users could understand how to operate the phone. The result: disaster. The main culprit—lack of visibility—was coupled with a secondary culprit—a poor conceptual model. Any money saved on the installation and purchase is quickly disappearing in training costs, missed