It's been nearly 25 years since I got my first mobile phone, a Motorola Brick. I was one of the first people I knew to use mobiles. But times have changed: the cost differential between mobile and fixed lines has increased, VoIP has lowered the costs of fixed telephony, and now that I'm not as mobile any more myself, there seems to be no need.
Well, almost. We do move around a little, and it's good to have a phone with you. But now it has to be a smart phone. Yvonne has one from Chris Bahlo, and last week I got a call on it. Buzz, green and red phone symbols light up on the screen. And it also volunteered the information that the call was from Tom Tyler, with whom I wanted to speak. Intuitively I guessed that green meant answer and red meant reject . So I pressed on green . It wouldn't be fair to say that nothing happened: the image lit up a little, so clearly the touch screen was working. But it didn't answer. I had to give up and call him back on a VoIP phone.
Today whilecoincidentallyI was with Tom, he went out to make some copies, so I tried calling the Android tablet I had with me from his phone. Sure enough, same thing, no response. Then the penny dropped: I had to slide the phone to the right. Now isn't that obvious? Isn't it intuitive? Of course not. On old-fashioned GSM phones it was a physical button that you had to press. Why do I now have to slide? Where's that documented? Nowhere, of course: it's intuitive.
I'm reminded of the original meaning of the word smart . From the Oxford English Dictionary:
smart, adj.
Painful, uncomfortable; sharp, severe, intense.
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