[IxDA Discuss] comments to the "Doro's ridiculously simple phones in the wild"

[Katie Albers]

I'm far from elderly but there are two fundamental issues here that 
you appear to be conflating:

1) It's just the "elderly" who want these phones
2) They want them because they "don't know how to use other features"
3) Big buttons is a desirable design only for "older people"

First, these phones (which we're going to define here as cell phones 
which have only a telephone set of features and which have large 
buttons) are useful to a number of different user groups. There are 
small children -- who you want to have a phone for safety, but you 
don't want them to be able to call a small village in China just for 
fun. There are people who find it difficult to use the insanely small 
buttons on most cell phones: people with long nails, people with 
neural diseases or tremors, people with fat fingers...

Second, sticking with your belief that these phones are for the 
elderly: You aren't getting younger, you know. The day will come when 
you will find it hard to press the correct, tiny button and to read 
the miniscule labels.

Thirdly, most of the actual "elderly" I know love phones with address 
books and so forth. They're quite adroit with them. It makes it 
easier for them to call the right person without the mental review of 
phone numbers necessitated otherwise.

However, in general, the number of people who really, really want 
their phone to contain the kitchen sink is probably much smaller than 
cell companies would iike. I, for example, do not want my phone to 
have video capabilities, I don't want to use it as a camera or for 
video creation or display. I don't want a web browser. Not because I 
don't want to figure out how to do those things but because the damn 
screen is so small I can't imagine why I'd bother.

Actually, the phone hardware companies keep trying to design these 
phones and the end-users keep asking for these phones (that is to 
say: larger buttons, fewer bells and whistles) but the cell provider 
companies love being able to sell the add-ons that go with the fancy 
ones.

Katie

P.S. Are you sure that's your URL? I keep getting a Could Not Locate error

At 6:21 AM -0800 11/26/07, ELISABETH HUBERT wrote:
>Is it just me or is the market for these types of phones starting to
>disappear. I know that older people are looking to use these types of
>phones now, but I'm assuming that the number of elderly that don't
>know how to use other features (address book for example) is
>decreasing over time. Any idea how long we'll need these types of
>solutions around?? I'm thinking no more than say 3 - 5 years, but
>that is a shot in the dark. The need for bigger buttons may always be
>around.
>
>~Lis
>
>http://www.elisabethhuber.com
>
>
>. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>Posted from the new ixda.org
>http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=22900
>
>
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-- 

----------------
Katie Albers
katie at firstthought.com