
Designs that Bell Almost Used for the Layout of Telephone Buttons - Aqua_Geek
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/the-17-designs-that-bell-almost-used-for-the-layout-of-telephone-buttons/279237/
======
user24
What I particularly like is the fact that, from a purely data-driven
perspective, the obvious choice is I-C; the rotary-mimicing layout.

But (I conject) the lower error rate and preference is merely down to
familiarity of users with the older rotary system.

So the lesson, for me anyway, is that listening to your users or to your data
without applying your own reasoning can easily lead you to the wrong
conclusion.

Which is not groundbreaking, but it's nice to have case studies.

~~~
user24
*edit; it was lower keying time not lower error rate on I-C, but the point remains. I-C is the only layout with more than one special attribute.

------
Aloha
Here is the link to the original BSTJ article.

[http://www3.alcatel-
lucent.com/bstj/vol39-1960/articles/bstj...](http://www3.alcatel-
lucent.com/bstj/vol39-1960/articles/bstj39-4-995.pdf)

~~~
VBprogrammer
A friend is doing a PHD related to this subject.

Quite an interesting video of her talking about it if you are interested:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCSzjExvbTQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCSzjExvbTQ)

Edit: Just realised Sarah's video is referenced at the end of the Article.

~~~
smackfu
Numberphile in general is great. 5-10 minute chunks of interesting math. Not
too long to be boring.

------
unreal37
This title stretches the definition of the word "almost". They tested a bunch
of varieties and settled on the best one. That doesn't mean the worst of them
were "almost used".

~~~
state
Sometimes I think I have become so used to the extreme hyperbole of linkbait
headlines that I forget it's even there. You're right.

~~~
joonix
Is there a browser extension that ensures I'll never see anything from The
Atlantic, Slate, and Business Insider ever again? These sites are profoundly
annoying and stressful.

~~~
dan1234
You could edit your hosts file and map their domains to 127.0.0.1 or even
filter them at your router, if it has that functionality.

~~~
MichaelApproved
You'll still see their articles listed on the front page. I think OP is
looking for something that would remove it from the site altogether.

------
Mindless2112
I never consciously realized that the phone button layout was different than
the calculator/number-pad layout. Weird! I'm curious whether I've misdialed
numbers because of that.

~~~
Too
I've lost my credit card due to that. ATMs have phone layout and i entered my
pin using numpad layout three times T_T.

~~~
kamjam
Came here to comment the same thing, I can almost blindly type these things
out, but the change in the format has caught me out a few times.

My portable GPS unit by default has the ABC layout keyboard, that is just as
annoying to use when you are used to QWERTY!

------
xbryanx
It's really odd to me that the traditional keyboard 10-key entry pad hasn't
switched to the phone number layout. If the phone layout is more efficient and
less error prone, why didn't keyboards start with the phone layout and not the
calculator layout?

~~~
soperj
Might only be less error prone for entering phone numbers.

~~~
consultant23522
I was thinking more along the lines of early computer only really being used
by people who had a stronger muscle memory for calculator usage than telephone
usage.

------
pdubbs
It's interesting to think about how the use of one of these alternate layouts
would influence today's phones. I wonder what the iOS/Android phone apps would
look like with a circular button layout.

~~~
mbq
There was at least Nokia 3650 with something like I-C; I must say I liked its
layout but Nokia never continued it.

------
smileysteve
This makes me wonder how many HackerNews readers have actually used a rotary
phone.

~~~
jacques_chester
It's like remembering the screeeeee-krrsssssh-bdang!bdang!bdang!-krrrssssh-
click of a dialup modem. It fairly neatly bifurcates generations of nerds.

Rotary phones were quite elegant. As the dial returns to 0, it sends pulses
down the line. The pulses actuate series of stepping switches to form the
final phone circuit.

~~~
lutusp
> Rotary phones were quite elegant. As the dial returns to 0, it sends pulses
> down the line. The pulses actuate series of stepping switches to form the
> final phone circuit.

Back when I was poor and didn't have a place to live, I would go into a hotel
lobby where they had a phone for guests to receive, but not make, calls -- the
phone didn't have a dial. I would pick up the handset, wait for a dial tone,
then press one of the buttons beneath the handset, ten time really fast. Then
I would say, "Hello, operator? I'm handicapped, can you dial a number for me?"

~~~
jacques_chester
Australia's phone system largely skipped past having operators, so the various
tricks for getting one to dial for you never worked here.

~~~
lutusp
Just as well. Human operators only prolonged unfair and very negative sexual
stereotypes.

~~~
jacques_chester
It's ok, we're Australians. We have plenty of other negative sexual
stereotypes to pick up any slack.

------
mentos
I wonder how long the telephone number will be around for? Another 10 years?
100?

Do you think 1000 years from now we'll still be using them?

~~~
BrandonMarc
Can you rattle off your facebook account number? Chances are, few people are
more than semi-consciously aware that such a thing exists.

Chances are the phone number will remain, but it won't be important ... like
Facebook, and like modern phones, you deliberately connect with someone. True
with modern phones you do consciously give them a number whereas with Facebook
you don't (even though it's the underlying account id #'s used by Facebook's
infrastructure), but there are other options such as bumping someone's phone
with yours to initiate transfer of some piece of data or other.

------
bhrgunatha
I'm struggling to find a difference between IV-A (the winning design) and
VI-A.

Is there a subtle difference? They look the same to me.

If they are the same, why would they have two identical designs?

~~~
lstamour
Saw this too. I suspect each row refers to a specific head-to-head test of 3
designs. If so, you should only compare statements within each row, and not
vertically.

------
smoyer
I remember having a touch-tone phone with the buttons in the positions of the
finger holes for a rotary-dial phone. I think it was supposed to look retro?

------
hawkharris
I hope that the cross pattern came with gospel sounds instead of the standard
beeps.

------
riazrizvi
They should have put the zero before the one.

~~~
ds9
Yes!! It's remarkable that only one or two of the designs had the numbers in
order.

I've always wondered about this in regard to keyboards as well: why did anyone
ever think it was a good idea to put one of the numbers out of sequence?

~~~
kolinko
In case of rotary phones it was much easier to put zero at the end. The old
phones used pulses to dial numbers - one pulse meant one, two pulses - two,
and so on. Ten pulses meant zero. If they wanted to put zero at the beginning,
the dialing mechanism would need to be much more complex.

~~~
nemetroid
In Sweden, one pulse was (is) used for zero, two pulses for one and so forth.
Therefore, old rotary phones havet zero next to one [1]. However, when buttons
were introduced de ended up with the same layout as the US.

1:[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Dialog.jp...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Dialog.jpg)

------
DanBC
None of these include the ABCD keys (FLASH OVERRIDE, FLASH, IMMEDIATE, &
PRIORITY) used by AUTOVON which started in 1963.

It's interesting that all of these layouts are presented on a round
background.

------
darwinGod
Book Recommendation: "Design of Everyday things". A great book,and
particularly covers quite a bit about telephones.

Surprised no one has brought this up yet. :-)

------
wozniacki
I like III-B.

It seems to have the least amount of finger-roam of all the layouts.

Yet it offers more keying discernability than VI-A owing to the tiered layout.

~~~
Coincoin
I wonder if they took the visual mnemonic shortcut we use to remember the
numbers into account. That would explain why they settled on a uniform almost
square grid.

------
stevewillows
Based on this sheet, it looks like they decided on the layout we use but
wanted testing to back it up.

------
qznc
Hm, IV-A and VI-A is the same?

~~~
olalonde
From the comments:

2A and 6B are the same too. Maybe the repeats got the best results in the
first five sets of trials so they brought them back and pitted them against
each other as well as the traditional rotary phone number arrangement in round
six. 6A eventually won, obviously.

------
nextstep
Aren't VI-A and IV-A the same layout?

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Ya. And aren't II-A and VI-B the same? It bothers me that they didn't mention
anything about this.

