Touchless phones don’t please anybody
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More or less?… Less! Less is more. Less is more if we stick to Apple, Nokia, or BenQ, some of the principal companies engaged in the minimalist phone quest (check our list). Even Microsoft embraces the trend, with some mistakes like the Zune box which shows nothing but the ‘Zune’ brand — and making it useless if you don’t know what is inside.
But sometimes, some voices simply think more is more. It’s the case of Design Sojourn blog (via textually and del.icio.us) which is wondering if “such non-mechanical buttons actually reduce the user experience rather than enhance it.”
And, although appreciating the touchless trend, it stands for mechanical buttons. “Nothing gives a more satisfying, direct physical feedback response than a moving cylinder that triggers a switch. It’s instantaneous and you know with its depression and haptic feedback, something will happen.” Other reasons are listed on the post.
Discussing on what to keep mechanical and what could be turned touchless is interesting. But it misses just one aspect: Voice integration.
Mobile phones are evolving towards mobile computers, all instant messengers are supposed to land on those tiny screens, some companies already consider handsets as portable game consoles, with motion sensors. Sooner or later, all those trends will mostly rely on the voice as a primary navigation mechanism. And with the voice replacing the finger, being touchless or not isn’t that critical. You’ll end up with a cellphone with an on/off button, and nothing more.
Oct 30, 2006 | By Nuno
2 comments
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Hi!
Thanks for your plug on my blog post.
Yes you are correct voice control will eventually remove it all. However at its current state it still cannot give you a good activation rate. Most consumer voice activation systems still needs to record a master voice tag first to associate it with a function. It would probably be a few more years before its trustworthy and flexible enough.
Personally I feel a button still gives you almost a 100% activation rate. So I still do see mission critical controls will still use buttons.
Put it this way as in your example at the end, if its truly voice activated, why is the on/off control still a button?
Right. I do like buttons too. It’s straightforward, offers simplicity of use. And I also agree that voice activation still lacks accuracy but works quite fine, albeit the required initialization process.
When voice navigation would be doing fine enough to get rid of buttons, I still think there would be one remaining. The on/off button. Because people would still consider their phones as pure devices. And the button would be their security when something goes wrong. It’s the ‘in-case’ button, just like there’s always the reset button on computers. It’s psychological. We need it even if nobody would use it.