Cell Phones & Society

[1]
Convenience: The “Smart” Phone
Recent findings from a British study show storing contact information on cell phones decreases people’s ability (while reducing the need) to remember telephone numbers. Moreover, nearly one-quarter of the survey’s participants could not remember their own telephone number. While today’s advanced cell phones, also called Smart Phones, can allow time for us to prepare and focus on arguably more important issues by eliminating the need to retain or recall seemingly less important details (such as the correct spelling of colleagues’ last names) it can also facilitate a culture of thoughtless robots or, as suggested in Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt’s book, “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America.”

The question arises: What impact does this impose on society? During a lecture given to the Columbus Society of Communicating Arts, Jesse James Garrett (co-founder and President of Adaptive Path, an experience design firm based in San Francisco, and author of The Elements of User Experience) discussed the dangers of not letting people think for themselves. Interactive designers’ primary goal is to eliminate all potential frustration during the product's operation through usability optimization. That is: the more intuitive the software, the more useful, usable, and desirable. However, Garrett raised concerns regarding designers' devaluation of utilizing the human brain. Therefore, essentially, interactive designers are doing society a great disservice by creating intuitively designed presentations.

This notion suggests that users should be encouraged to “think for themselves” through the use of rigid, non-intuitive technology - in effect, forcing users to frequently refer to the Help menu. This would further the original problem by creating more confusion when trying to accomplish quotidian tasks. Having to search through the Help menu’s index of articles while simply trying to pay an electric bill online does not make the user more intelligent or benefit society in any way. Intuitive interactive presentations eliminate dual objectives: meaning, the user should not need to first view a tutorial in order to learn how to pay their electric bill online - they should simply pay the electric bill online.

[2]
Connectivity + Privacy
Engineers have long been stricken with the task of making things work better, faster, and more efficiently. Cellular phones are synonymous with losing their service provider’s signal due to the user's location, extreme weather conditions, and, other times, absolutely nothing at all. Police and medical reports frequently cite a cell phone’s lack of service as a factor in cases of preventable physical attacks or worsened injuries. James Kim, editor of C-Net.com (web site which provides expert reviews of modern technology), died from exposure and hypothermia while trying to retrieve help for his family after their car was buried in snow during a road trip. Kim’s death could have certainly been prevented had he received a signal on his cellular phone and been able to contact the appropriate local authorities for help.

Ironically, only a few weeks after Kim’s death, C-Net.com released survey results that indicated the general public’s distrust of location based software in cellular phones largely due to the pervasive fear of being watched by “Big Brother” regardless of the palpable dangers that surfaced during Kim’s disappearance and death. Also, most cellular phones are already equipped with software enabling users to be located during emergencies while the device is turned on (even if there is no service signal available). This indicates that the fear of being located by a mobile communication device is merely perceptual; users have been located by their cellular phones before this feature was advertised as a technological breakthrough.

[3]
Proposed Solutions
Steps should be taken to inform the public of not only the dangers of intuitively designed applications and location-based cellular phone software but also the unclear advantages as well. While advertising has made its attempts and is usually fairly unsuccessful, other forms of media can be utilized such as interviews/debates with experts, case studies, documentaries, and published research to clearly articulate both concepts.