Decide how far and in what ways usability goals or design principles appear to be represented in the design of your mobile phone
Scenario
John is in the meeting and so cannot be interrupted.. This also means he has to turn his phone onto silent to avoid any phone calls and message alerts being heard by his colleagues quickly.
Function: Switch phone to silent.
To turn the phone onto silent, you have to flick the button on the side of the phone down. From previous phones, switching to silent was rather tedious. It may have involved going into the settings on your phone and finding it from there from various sub folders. It isn't very efficient as putting your phone on silent is possibly one of the most important and helpful features of a phone. And so it makes sense to create a simple button the side of the phone, to instantly put it into silent. Essentially this isn't a cultural convention as of yet. This is particular to apple phones.
But with this slight alteration john can easily change his phone to silent without unlocking his phone and in a fraction of the time of another phone.
Possibly if other manufactures adapt this feature, then it would be a cultural convention, amongst phones and so changing to silent will not be so tedious.
Scenario 2
John is on the train and has to quickly look at emails on the move, and to talk to his business clients.
Function : check emails and call a person.
For john to check his emails he essentially has to connect his email account to the iphone. This is done by going into settings --> mail --> add account. He then has to sign into the account. Once completed it will a be connected to his phone. To quickly check his email, at the home screen he can press the mail button which will instantly show all his mail, and also download any new mail. Again this isn't a cultural convention. It is a learning convention. This is attended by the manufacture for you to learn, but once completed, makes using the phone much simpler, as he will always have his account connected to his phone, when he presses the mail button. It is much more efficient this way , rather than going onto the phones web browser and accessing mail.
As for calling his client, the steps he has to take involves pressing the phone button on the home screen. This opens his contact to which he can press onto, and then press call. This in turn is a cultural convention amongst other phones, as all phones will need to go through the contacts to call a particular person you know. He will also have to hang up when finished and so within our culture , green means 'go', and red means 'stop' and so pressing the red button will 'stop' the call. And so it makes sense for this layout off the big red 'end call' button to stop the call.
Essentially the iphone's user centered design is hard to comment on has apple as looked at all areas of usability.
Scenario 2
John is on the train and has to quickly look at emails on the move, and to talk to his business clients.
Function : check emails and call a person.
For john to check his emails he essentially has to connect his email account to the iphone. This is done by going into settings --> mail --> add account. He then has to sign into the account. Once completed it will a be connected to his phone. To quickly check his email, at the home screen he can press the mail button which will instantly show all his mail, and also download any new mail. Again this isn't a cultural convention. It is a learning convention. This is attended by the manufacture for you to learn, but once completed, makes using the phone much simpler, as he will always have his account connected to his phone, when he presses the mail button. It is much more efficient this way , rather than going onto the phones web browser and accessing mail.
As for calling his client, the steps he has to take involves pressing the phone button on the home screen. This opens his contact to which he can press onto, and then press call. This in turn is a cultural convention amongst other phones, as all phones will need to go through the contacts to call a particular person you know. He will also have to hang up when finished and so within our culture , green means 'go', and red means 'stop' and so pressing the red button will 'stop' the call. And so it makes sense for this layout off the big red 'end call' button to stop the call.
Essentially the iphone's user centered design is hard to comment on has apple as looked at all areas of usability.
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