I plugged in a phone I’ve had collecting dust in order to use it’s speaker phone. It’s a nice phone that works well. It’s one of these 390 phones and looks identical to the image below.

The problem is that whoever designed this phone clearly didn’t actually try it. If they had then they would have used the speakerphone for conference calls and they would have used the mute function while on those conference calls. While on one, probably more, of those conference calls, they would have been asked a question by someone on the call. Quickly they’d turn to the phone’s buttons in order to unmute so they can be heard. They would have then hung up on the call. Why? Take a look at the buttons

They placed the mute button beside the speaker button. If you’re using the speaker and it’s muted then that little red light is flashing. At some point in the past we humans were trained to press the button beside the red light that’s flashing. It sort of makes sense. In the rush of a call when you need to respond quickly or a client’s going to think you’re surfing tsn instead of paying attention to the call, you see flashing red light which means muted. You want to unmute so hit that button. Done, dial tone, no con call as you’ve just hung up.

I suppose the issue isn’t really the close proximity of the buttons as much as the flashing red light on the speaker button. In either case I have to explicitly train myself not to hit that damn button beside the flashing red light to unmute. I have to be conscious of it which to me screams of terrible usability, or a dumb user.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Geek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.