Know Who's Calling: Tactile Design | Hacker News Reader

Know Who's Calling: Tactile Design

azarask.in

21 pointssp3326 comments

This article seems to imply that there are two groups of people who call you: people who call you where you WOULD fish the phone out the pocket to answer, and people who call you where you wouldn't do so.

Personally, I don't care who is calling me. If my cell phone rings when I am engaged in a conversation with someone else, I don't answer it. I don't even fish it out of my pocket to see who's calling, because it doesn't matter who is calling, really.

What is more pertinent to me over who is calling, may be what the context of the call is. But how do you know the context of the call is. If your wife is phoning you, is she phoning you to see if you're still picking up fish for dinner? Or is she calling you because your daughter hit her head at soccer practice and she's at the hospital? The solution to the problem of context may be to have intelligent voice menus that people hear before they reach you. For instance, I may have a voice menu when people call me that say, "Press 1 if this call is of normal importance. Press 2 if this is a personal emergency." -- with different vibrating tones for each option. If they dial 1, you get a distinctive vibrate that goes to voice mail if you don't answer. If they dial 2, you get a distinctive vibration that indicates it's an urgent call that maybe requires that you break your attention from what you're doing.

Have you ever noticed that everything is always urgent if it has the option to be?

That's what the setting is for in which you flag the maximum urgency a caller is permitted.

I've understood it as an option to feel who called you. That would make a big difference for me. If I feel the name and that name is my wife's, I'd probably excuse myself a minute later and call back. If it's an incomprehensible vibration, it's someone I don't know or who calls rarely. That type of call can wait.

Also, your suggestion can be combined with his. Distinctive vibration for the name + urgent/normal as a second vibe.

How about, if-and-only-if someone needs to communicate something important to you, and they can't reach you, they send you a text message saying what they wanted? Tell your friends/family to do this, and you've given a social problem (not wanting to disturb people with the light/sound/attention of the phone) a social solution: never check for calls, but always check for texts. It does rely on the assumption, however, that a stranger calling (who obviously won't know the rule) is never urgent.

I think this could be done with a separate bluetooth device with a vibrating motor built in.

It would be a similar product to trying to solve the other major issue with phone calls being heard. If someone often stores their phone in a backpack or purse instead of their pocket, vibrate is useless. Also, most of the time these people do not hear their phone. It can be kinda annoying when your trying to reach them in a noisy establishment.

Why not make a super thin bluetooth/vibrate device that can hook onto a pocket (or whatever) so calls are detected every time! (and could be a pattern as well so you know who is calling)

There would also be a different alert with text messages.

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