Critical Section


crappy Treo GUI

Friday,  02/10/06  11:58 AM

Today I was on a conference call, on my Treo 650, as I often am (!), and I was going in and out of "mute", as I often do (!), and I noticed for the first time how horrible the Treo 650 GUI is for this.  Actually I've been dimly aware of it for a long time, but the horribleness suddenly shot into the foreground as I realized exactly how bad it was.  Now I'm a huge fan of the Treo 650, as you know, and in general the interface is very good.  But this is not good:

Treo mute GUI - muted

What we have here is a "Hang Up All" button - that's pretty obvious - and a "Cancel" button - pretty obvious also; I'm using a bluetooth headset, and clicking this button cancels the headset - then a "Swap" button - I had two calls attached, and can swap between them - and then finally a "Mute" button.  Aha, that mute button!  Take a close look at that.  Is it muted now, or not?

Since the Cancel button has a picture of headphones, and a little red X, you would think clicking the Cancel button would cancel the headphones.  And indeed it does.  Now the Mute button has a picture of a microphone, and a little red X, so does clicking the Mute button cancel the microphone?  NO!  In actuality Mute is already on in the picture above, and the microphone is off.  Clicking the Mute button cancels muting, and turns the microphone back on.  At that point the icon changes, like this:

Treo mute GUI - not muted

I've had this phone for a while now, and I still have to think about this all the time ("is it muted now, or not?")  A red slash through the picture of the microphone like one of those European road signs would have been a good choice, that would indicate muting pretty unambiguously.  I Googled for "mute" and the very first hit was a great choice:

a better mute button

Totally unambiguous.  And cute besides.  Okay, you Treo designer people, are you listening?

Home
Archive
'08   '07   '06
'05   '04   '03
All Articles
Re:Cycling
Re:The Book
Re:Software
Re:Philosophy
About Me
W=UH
Email
Search

RSS   OPML

Greatest Hits
Correlation vs. Causality
The Tyranny of Email
Unnatural Selection
Lying
Aperio's Mission = Automating Pathology
On Blame
Try, or Try Not
Books and Wine
Google and Blogs
Emergent Properties
God and Beauty
Moving Mount Fuji The Nest Rock 'n Roll
IQ and Populations
Are You a Bright?
Adding Value
Confidence
The Joy of Craftsmanship
The Emperor's New Code
Toy Story
The Return of the King
Religion vs IQ
Most Spectacular Photos of 2003
In the Wet
the big day
solving bongard problems
visiting Titan
unintelligent design
Shorthorn
the nuclear option
second gear
On the Persistence of Bad Design...
Texas chili cookoff
the inflection point
almost famous design and stochastic debugging
may I take your order?
paper art
triple double
China's olympic gardens
New Yorker covers
Death Rider! (da da dum)
how did I get here (Mt.Whitney)?
Π