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I find testing new user experiences for something as established as a dial pad to be interesting. This post mostly talks about changing the design for the dial

I find testing new user experiences for something as established as a dial pad to be interesting. This post mostly talks about changing the design for the dial pad to put more buttons within thumb reach, without going into many of the additional challenges. For example, as others commented, many users primarily 'dial' their smartphone nowadays by tapping on somebody's face or going through their contact information. The cost of changing the experience may not be worth the added benefit. Along those same lines, it may well be that most dial pad users are not the owner of the phone, but somebody who borrows it to make a call or enter their own info. In that case, the experience should be familiar to them, regardless of whether the user has grown accustomed to a new dial pad. These are the kinds of factors I'd like to see discussed in researching a new dial pad experience. Resistance to change on something like this is real. In developing a web-based phone app, people who were using computers, with keyboards, would still prefer to click on the buttons in the style of a traditional dial pad. To me, investigating those challenges are much more interesting than "Here are some designs; let's see which you say you like."

i_cant_speel 9y ago
Whenever I am going to call someone, I use the dial pad but I start to type their name instead of their phone number. I feel like that is also pretty common so I wouldn't say this is something where the costs would outweigh the benefits.
- dmix 9y ago
  Good point, even if I don't have them in my contact book with a name I still likely have called them previously, so I used the recent caller list and scroll + click on the number I recognize. I wouldn't say dialing a new number is a common use case for me. But that doesn't mean people don't do it often enough to warrant research. These generic "solved" UX issues are still things that millions of people do each day, given a billion phones, so it's well worth a modern UX study IMO.

i_cant_speel 9y ago

Whenever I am going to call someone, I use the dial pad but I start to type their name instead of their phone number. I feel like that is also pretty common so I wouldn't say this is something where the costs would outweigh the benefits.

dmix 9y ago
Good point, even if I don't have them in my contact book with a name I still likely have called them previously, so I used the recent caller list and scroll + click on the number I recognize. I wouldn't say dialing a new number is a common use case for me. But that doesn't mean people don't do it often enough to warrant research. These generic "solved" UX issues are still things that millions of people do each day, given a billion phones, so it's well worth a modern UX study IMO.