DESPITE the wealth of life-organising features built into today鈥檚 cellphones, most of them are impossible to use when they are needed most 鈥� during a call. Arranging a meeting, for instance, usually means interrupting your conversation to take the phone away from your ear so you can use the keypad to navigate to the calendar. The same goes when you are trying to save an address or phone number.
But it needn鈥檛 be that way, says Patrick Baudisch, an engineer at Microsoft鈥檚 research lab in Redmond, Washington. All one needs to do, he says, is place the keypad on the back of the phone, on the opposite side to the speaker and microphone. That would allow users to press the keys while holding the phone to their ear.
But how will you know which buttons to press if you can鈥檛 see them? Easy, Baudisch insists: the phone gives you subtle audio prompts that tell you which menus you are accessing.
Advertisement
Microsoft has built a prototype phone, and calls the auditory menu-navigation technology 鈥淏lindSight鈥�. The notion is a little out of the ordinary, Baudisch concedes, but he notes that once upon a time very few people thought predictive texting would catch on.
鈥淯sers control BlindSight using the keypad,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut instead of showing output on the screen, it responds with auditory feedback, in short bursts heard only by the user.鈥� For example, pressing 鈥�3鈥� takes the user to their calendar, and they hear the word 鈥渃alendar鈥�. Once there, pressing the 鈥�5鈥� key provides a 3-second preview of that day鈥檚 planned activities. Each busy slot is represented by a 鈥渢ick鈥� sound and a free slot by a 鈥渂eep鈥�. A busy morning followed by a quiet afternoon (鈥渢ick, tick, tick, beep, beep鈥�) is easy to distinguish from a fully booked day (鈥渢ick, tick, tick, tick, tick鈥�). A quick touch of the 鈥�0鈥� key, and the user can reserve a slot for a meeting as they continue to talk.
鈥淥f course there are other ways around this problem; Bluetooth headsets let you use the screen and talk,鈥� says Baudisch. 鈥淏ut I think it would be good to move away from screens in mobile devices altogether.鈥�
鈥淚t would be good to move away from screens in mobile devices altogether鈥�
Although screens are useful, because a quick glance reveals a lot of information, Baudisch says that we have overlooked a key element. 鈥淥utside, there鈥檚 stuff happening around you all the time. It鈥檚 a shame to miss what鈥檚 going on around you because you are looking at a mobile device.鈥� So it makes sense to use hearing to interact with mobile devices, he says, a notion that would also encourage the development of better gadgets for visually impaired people.
Roope Takala at the Nokia Research Center in Espoo, Finland, points out that sound-based menu navigation would also help when your eyes are otherwise engaged. 鈥淕PS navigation devices already use audio to give you directions,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hen people are multitasking, bringing in an audio channel separate from the visual channel can make things easier to handle.鈥�
Stephen Brewster at the University of Glasgow in the UK welcomes the innovation, but wonders how easy it would be to master. 鈥淭rying to do two things at once is mentally demanding,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 think you鈥檇 probably stop talking while you do this navigation.鈥�
Baudisch will demonstrate BlindSight at this year鈥檚 Computer-Human Interaction conference in Florence, Italy, in April.
