DesignAday

Sharing Data

Some months back, I was looking for places to save money and figured out that I could cut back the data plans on our phones from the original unlimited plans to the lowest-tier, 200 MB per month plans. Looking at our data usage, I determined that we were almost always on WiFi when we used our phones for anything significant. It wasn’t long after that my company decided to forbid personal devices on its wireless network, and my data usage went up significantly. My wife’s remained low. Occasionally, I would barely go over 200 MBs, and AT&T would bill me $15 for an additional 200 MBs, which I didn’t use. This was aggravating, considering my wife had used less than 100 MBs of hers. That just didn’t seem fair. Why can’t we share our data the same way we share our minutes?

Since that time, my data use has continued to increase, and I moved up to 300 MBs a month. I added my daughter to the plan for her birthday, also at 300 MBs, which is now the lowest tier. My wife is still on the discontinued 200 MB plan. So, at $55 per month, we have 800 MBs distributed between us. If one of us goes over our individual limit, regardless of how little we use, the fee doubles. And unlike minutes, data doesn’t roll over.

AT&T just announced Mobile Share, available at the end of this month. 

Get Unlimited Talk & Text plus shared data for all your devices on one simple plan. Plans range from 1GB to 20GB of data to share, and the more you share the more you save. Pick your plan, add up to 10 devices and you’re ready to talk, text, browse the internet and more – it’s all included in your AT&T Mobile Share Plan.

From what I can gather, it would cost $130 for the three of us to share 1 GB of data with unlimited talk and text. $150 would give us 4 GBs. If I understand correctly, it’s going to be much more cost effective. I’ve not been particularly impressed with AT&T in the past, but this has the potential to change my mind.

Googgles

Two weeks ago, Google posted their visionary video introducing Project Glass, a head-worn display (HWD) for your phone. At least, I assume it is “for your phone”, rather than “as your phone”, mainly due to the fact that, in the near future, they won’t be able to fit the components into that small and light a form factor. None of the articles I’ve read have given details of the technology, but I’m assuming the device communicates via Bluetooth with an Android phone.

Some have questioned the technical feasibility. I have no doubts about this. I was working with wearable computers and HWDs back in 1999. The wearable group in CMU’s Robotics Institute had an impressively small and powerful wearable named Spot that I designed some software for. We were using a prototype HWD from IBM that was only a little bulkier than the Google prototype.

Not quite as stylish as Google’s glasses, I know, but it was state-of-the art in 2002. It was the equivalent of viewing an 800 x 600 pixel, 15 inch, VGA display at 12 inches. So, ten years later, I have no doubt that it is possible to produce something similar to what is shown in Google’s video.

However, I have to agree with Mark Wilson’s article for Fast Company. The technical hurdles are the smallest ones. Wearables were a very popular area of research at institutions such as MIT, CMU, and Georgia Tech. There were several companies, like Xybernaut, that tried to make a go at commercializing them. They all failed. It’s reminiscent (if worse) of the tablet market prior to the iPad, and it seems Google wants to pull an Apple. Is it possible to do for wearables what Apple did for tablets?

One thing Google has going for them is that we are already wearing the CPU. We all carry a phone in our pocket or purse that has far more processing power than Spot, as well as multiple wireless communication antennas and contextual sensors. Another advantage is that speech input is finally becoming an acceptable method of interaction. Back in the day, we were dealing with novel input devices: dials, joysticks, and chording keypads like the Twiddler. These were interesting experiments, but they were barriers to adoption.

So it all comes down to fashion. Yes, there’s that word again. What will it take to make HWDs not just socially acceptable, but fashionable? We don’t want to look anything like Steve Mann from the ’90s. I’ve seen many men walking around with Bluetooth ear pieces, but let’s be honest—nobody thinks that’s cool. Google’s hardware is more attractive than any other headgear I’ve seen, but is it sexy? Could it accrue the same social currency as Apple’s white earbuds? It’s possible, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Disorientation

In the past, amateur photographers tended to forget that a camera could be rotated ninety degrees to take a picture of something tall and narrow, like a person. I have noticed a new trend among family and friends as more of them get smartphones (mostly iPhones) with cameras. They naturally hold them in portrait orientation and don’t think about it when taking a picture. I’ve seen many photos of landscapes, groups of people, and other subjects that would be much better framed in landscape orientation shrunk down to fit within the width of the portrait-oriented image, sandwiched by vast amounts of uninteresting ground and sky or floor and ceiling. Even video has fallen prey to this unfortunate tendency, even though you never see a movie or television show shot in portrait orientation. It would not surprise me to learn that a higher percentage of photos on Flikr and Facebook are in portrait orientation for this very reason. I wonder if the software could do something to prompt users to think about orientation.

Voicemailigned

Don Norman spends a good many words relating the problems with telephones in his book The Design of Everyday Things. It’s almost unfair to pick on them—it’s too easy. Luckily, I don’t receive many phone calls at my office. I use email for the majority of my communication, and I’m usually at my desk when a call does come in, so I don’t have to use the voicemail system very often. On the occasion that I am confronted with the blinking red light that indicates a message, I must move through the following voice tree:

Welcome to the such-and-such voicemail messaging system. To record a message, press 1. To listen to messages, press 2.

(2)

You have one new message. To listen to the message, press 0.

(0)

Message received today at 12:23 p.m.

(The message plays… finally!)

End of message. To listen to the message, press 0. To skip, press pound. To delete, press star 3.

(*3)

Message deleted. No more messages… etc.

The designers of the system have obviously given no thought to which actions a user is most likely to take at any given point in the tree. Why is the first option presented recording a message? I can’t imagine that a large percentage of people call up their own voicemail to leave themselves messages. It seems to me that the most often used feature of voicemail is to listen to your new messages. That should be the first option, if there are actually new messages.

When I’m done listening to a message, there is a chance I may want to listen to it again—I may not have been quick enough writing down the caller’s number—but I typically want to delete it. If there is only one message, what does the “skip” option do, anyway? 

It will be awhile before every phone has the equivalent of Apple’s Visual Voicemail. Until then, could we please have voicemail systems that are a tad more intelligent? 

Missed Opportunity #1

Around seven years ago, I was doing freelance work for Ericsson. I was helping them envision advanced phone concepts. One of the projects I worked on was software design for a smart phone. I visualized a graphical UI for managing and listening to voice mail. Upon seeing the screens, the woman I worked with stated that she didn’t think we could do that. Nothing ever came of the project, but it was good experience for me early in my career. I was pleasantly surprised when Steve Jobs announced during his keynote that Apple had worked with Cingular to develop Visual Voicemail for the iPhone, an industry first.

A Real Turn-Off

Aside from my day-job, I’m a part-time assistant professor at West Virginia University. Tonight I attended the annual senior Graphic Design student presentations. I knew I would find something in the experience worth writing about. While the presentations were good, and the projects interesting, this post was inspired by something that happened before the presentations actually started. As Eve Faulkes, the professor in charge of the program, gave the introduction, one of the seniors turned off their cell phone. Everyone in the theater could clearly hear the happy chime as it signalled its hibernation. This spurred the other students into action, and within seconds there was a dissonant chorus of cell phone shut-downs. Then, at the end of the introduction, the audience was asked to turn off their phones. Another barrage of jingles broke out as the presentations began. Why do cell phone makers insist on this particular auditory notification? Is it so important that one hear confirmation of the shut-down? It seems to me that a majority of situations that call for turning off a phone are to avoid impolite interruptions. Perhaps they assume that anyone wanting to be discreet will set their phone to vibrate mode before turning it off. If so, they have been proven incorrect.

Only What’s Important

For a couple more months, I have a Treo 650. I’ve been a fan of Palm since I started using one in 1999. I was happy to merge my PDA and cell phone into one unit, bulky though it is. But someone on their product development team got their priorities mixed up… or at least got my priorities mixed up. Somebody decided that it is really important to know if the phone is connected to a network. There is a small LED on the front of the phone in the top, left corner. Green indicates a network connection, and red indicates no connection. That alone wouldn’t be a problem, and seems sensible. Unfortunately, they didn’t stop there. It flashes every two seconds. This is extremely annoying. The light is bright enough to show through most of my shirt pockets. When I’m driving at night, it is constantly in my peripheral vision. I have to make sure it’s covered if I set it on my nightstand before I go to bed. I’ve lost count of the number of times people have informed me that my pocket is blinking. The presence or absence of a network is important information when I need to make a call. It is not, however, a state of which I must be constantly reminded.