

Know Who's Calling: Tactile Design - sp332
http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/know-whos-calling-tactile-design/

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brandon272
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.

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

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

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cmos
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.

