Designing a better mobile phone

By Sven Appel Jul 19, 2010, 11:56 GMT

Hamburg - The first two hours after getting a new mobile phone are critical to understanding how it works: if you haven't discovered what your phone can do by then, you're unlikely to find out later.

That rule is a source of discomfort for Raimund Schmolze. 'It's bad when customers don't use some functions because they're not aware they are there,' says the head of the Creation Centre which develops product concepts for Deutsche Telekom.

Schmolze and his colleagues not only create designs on the drawing board, they also work together with potential users. Their aim is to learn from customers by conducting what they call Usability Tests.

'To do that we sometimes spend a night sleeping on a family's couch,' says Schmolze. The designers want to know how phone users tick in the real world. A Deutsche Telekom employee will generally have no problem setting up a DSL connection. 'The employee knows the product from A to Z.' But the average consumer can hardly be expected to have that first-hand knowledge. Spending a night on a couch can help find out where potential problems may be. 'I'm astounded how well it works.'

But the designers from the Creation Centre do not always spend a night on the job. If they want to find out how teenagers use mobile phones their next port of call is a youth centre. 'Our colleagues -- two at the most -- spend a day with the teenagers,' explains Schmolze. 'They often encounter eye-opening experiences.'

The company Sirvaluse swings into action when a product is almost finished or has just arrived in the shops. Among the research work Sirvaluse carries out is how easy or complicated a certain make of mobile phone is to use. They usually work under contract with the phone maker.

Sirvaluse also aims to learn from the customer and it often invites phone users into its laboratories. There are no test tubes to be found in the lab, which looks more like a conventional office. But there is one major exception: a large one-way mirror embedded in the wall separating the next room where observers are sitting. Inside the lab room sit the phone user and an interviewer.

Hendrik Willmanns is one of those interviewers. He often tells the test person to 'think out loud.' As Willmanns describes what will happen in the next 90 minutes, he attaches the mobile phone to be tested onto a piece of Plexiglas with double sided sticky tape. The Plexiglas has a camera attached to it that records the test person's movements.

Before things really get going Willmanns asks the test person a few questions: 'Have you gotten annoyed with your mobile phone recently? When do you plan to buy a new phone?' Then he sets the test person tasks such as 'Call me,' or 'Take a picture of me and then add it to the contact list.'

The first few steps usually reveal where a mobile phone's problems are. Willmanns puts the test person at their ease by telling them that 'we're not here to see if you know how to use a phone. We're testing the phone.' All the time the camera records the session while observers -- sometimes including representatives from the mobile phone company -- sit behind the one-way mirror.

Raimund Schmolze says the information gleaned from Usability Tests is passed on to developers who in some cases make improvements in the next generation of phone. 'Further testing needs to be carried out in the event of big changes.'

Schmolze says the reason why the menu controls of some mobile phones continue to have small idiosyncrasies is because for the most part they are designed by engineers. The phones are well made machines, 'but engineers make up only a small portion of the population.' However, it is becoming increasingly rare that badly designed menu interfaces make their way into final products.