Question 1:
Software Interface design
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This is a Motorola Razor hand phone software introduced a few years back. The program designers decided to mimic the phone's appearance where they used the phone metaphor. This idea was good because people needed the familiarity making it easier to learn. But the problem with this program was quite obvious because it carried over the limitations as the real world, often it doesn't or can't accurately mimic the real world device and trying to emulate those real world interfaces with a mouse a keyboard is, at best, cumbersome.
Here are some critical points where this program violates the HCI design principle:
1. The main functions of the programs (sync data to the pc, transfer music files, etc) is actually at the mini slide bar on the right. The icons can’t represent the meaning of the icons. Furthermore, by pressing the menu button of the hand phone standalone cannot allow you to access the same function and it caused confusion for the user.
2. The "close" button for the program is not the red "turn off" button of the phone. Instead, it's the exact same looking icon at the bottom, but it is grey.
3. The soft keys and the circular navigation keys cannot do any functions and this will cause misleading to the user
4. The phone and the green circle appear to both be "call" functions, but the phone actually pull up the "call a contact" dialog box and this means that the phone screen serve no function at all.
5. There is a phone book icon there that is not the same icon as the phone uses. This is the case for other icons as well. I believe most user will spend the majority of time there getting images and ringtones loaded in their phone.
Software Interface design
[pic]
Above shown is the Bang&Olufsen hand phone, it was the first hand phone from the company since their re-entry to the market. Although it have some good reviews before the launch, but there is a few points...