Friday, April 20, 2007

THE CALL-ME-BACK

Can we not just standardise the Last Number Redial button on the phone now? Every phone I use it's a different symbol, a different process to access it.

Go into this menu, this submenu, it's there.

Press the button marked LNR (the N stands for Number).

Press the double-arrow-backwards key.

Push the button with the R on it.

They are actually issuing instruction booklets with office phones now. Telephones have become that complicated that we need a manual to use them. The whole point of the telephone was that it made it easier to talk to people, not more difficult, surely?

Maybe the problem is that "last number redial" is such a strange facility. It's completely inapplicable to anything else in your life. You don't do a last watered plant rewater. You don't do any kind of last sock removed remove. Last number redial is a whole otherness that is alien to the rest of our lives.

And, as such, it's quite hard to come up with a simple, credible visual representation for it that you could put on every phone. Still, that hasn’t stopped the Fire Exit people who've universally settled on "running man" as the ideal representation of escaping a possible fire. Which, let me remind you, is the one thing you're asked not to do if there is a fire alarm in your building. Of course, the motto of the Fire Exit people is "never say die".

So, please, telephone people - just settle on a generally accepted sign and stick with it. I propose an illustration of someone on the phone, looking angry and frustrated that the person they're calling didn't pick up the first time. That embraces the emotion of Last Number Redial pretty well for me.

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