Matchstick Message #11: Editing a signature should be reasonably possible

from Tara Raffi to Student Information Requests date Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 8:53 PM subject Matchstick Message #11: Editing a signature should be reasonably possible

Dear RIM,

We Berkeley students love our email signatures. They not only serve the function of providing great information, such as our phone number, on all emails, but also are usually healthy indicators of who we are and what we care about. But I don't have a signature on the emails I send out from my phone. Why? Because I just don't have the time to hunt around the Sprint website to figure out how to change it every time I change it on Google.

This may be different for different providers, but I know when I set it up with Sprint the first time, it was a pretty negative experience. And its just so random. Why is that the one setting for our phone that we need to go onto the website for? Does anybody even know about this? (I only found out because I was on the phone with BlackBerry customer service about once a day for the first two years as a User.)

On our BlackBerrys, we even have the capability of setting a semi-manual signature by going to Options>Owner. But you still have to type in "sig" every time you want it to show up. Why not just automatically insert it into the end of each email?

RIM, please make it a setting to automatically append our "sig" to the end of each email. And it should be somewhere more accessible than it is now from an external website or in the depths of our general Options. Gmail has it on the first page of their settings.

Sincerely,

Tara Raffi

Signature Enthusiast

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Matchstick Message #10: Texting could be easier

from Tara Raffi to Student Information Requests date Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 6:16 PM subject Matchstick Message #10: Texting could be easier

Dear RIM,

I've been sending a lot of texts lately. So it makes me think--if I could save a few seconds off each of my texts, and gain a little peace of mind, I think it could amount to an extra minute and a half extra in the shower, or the luxury of finishing that article about how Karzai receives bags of cash from Iran. Yes, "Dream Big" has always been my motto.

How can this be accomplished? Luckily, I have two ideas.

The first improvement is on how we select the recipient of our text message. For me, the personal nature of text messages mean that almost all of texts I send out go to one recipient. Or, if there is a need to text a specific group of people very often, a "contact group" serves as a single contact to enter into the To field. My point is, almost 100% of the time I enter a single contact when I compose a text message.

So, though it is nice that the "Select SMS Contact" box allows users to enter more than one contact at once, it probably isn't used that often. Therefore, it adds too many unnecessary steps. Instead of just entering "Noah Stern" and pressing Enter, I have to enter his name and press enter THREE TIMES to bypass that option. I just want to press enter once. We should just have "Add Additional Recipients" as a separate menu option like it used to be.

The second suggestion also relates to texting's inherently imitate quality. Texts are usually sent to a smaller group of people than you call, and for those people that you do text, it is probably a semi-regular occurrence. So when you are in that beloved "Select SMS Contact" box, as you begin to type in a name, the most frequently selected contacts should come first. Noah Stern should come before Nagi Sizuki and Nathan Pezeshki. I only BBM Nathan anyway; why should I have to read his name and scroll past it each time? (Other than that I love my cousin so much :) )

So, RIM, please make it faster for us to select contacts to by cutting out the extra steps and by making it possible to chose names based on frequency of selection.

Sincerely,

Tara Raffi

Efficiency Enthusiast

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Matchstick Message #9: Why Flash?

from Tara Raffi to Student Information Requests date Wed, Oct 20, 2010

Dear RIM,

Remember when you were little and you pressed the elevator button a hundred times because it made the elevator come faster?

Well what if one day your daddy was tucking you in and he said, "Son, the way elevators have worked for centuries is changing. When you press the button the first time, it will come--this much of our tradition has been preserved. But when you press it a second time, it changes direction and speeds to the 152nd floor. When you press it a third time, it comes back toward you again. The fourth time--away again. Why this change, son? Two reasons. The first reason is that we want to ensure your excellence in counting in pairs. And second, we just think its funny to take away simple pleasures and discourage inefficient behavior in children."

This is kind of like how the Flash function works on BlackBerry phones. Sometimes, when you press the green call button, it has mysteriously changed functions to the become Flash. This is unreasonable on a number of levels.

First of all, sometimes you're pressing Flash and you don't even know it. For example, let's imagine you are in the Call Log, and want to return a call you just missed. So you press the green Call button. That's logical. But lets say the call doesn't go through (yes, the BlackBerry has been known to lag), and you--having developed the master reflexes of the successful businessman--press the green button again. Well, now you're on the "other line" and the call you placed will be ringing away without you even noticing. But after a few seconds you notice (!), and thats when the mayhem of trying to remember the number of times you pushed the button begins, and you press Flash frantically until you hear a ring, which is harder than you think because of the silences between the rings... etc. It sucks.

Or what if you're in the middle of a call and the way you're clutching your BlackBerry desperately to your head makes you accidentally press the Call button? Silence.

I guess it doesn't seem like a big deal, but my main question is, as usual, WHY!? Why do we need Flash to be so readily accessible? There is no reason we would ever need it! When we have another incoming call, the options are clearly Answer or Ignore. So we don't need it then. Then when would we ever need Flash? Its not even like you can use it to place two calls at once and conference them. You have to go through the menu anyway to do that.

So, I don't realize why Flash exists on the phone. And if there is a reason, its certainly not obvious.

RIM, please move the Flash function off the Call button. To prevent separation anxiety, maybe add it to the ridiculously crowded menu.

Sincerely,

Tara Raffi

Consistency Enthusiast

P.S. Maybe this exists just on Sprint phones, but still, it should never be allowed. I know the US carriers are powerful, but assert yourself, RIM.

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Matchstick Message #8: Strategic Key Placement

from Tara Raffi to Student Information Requests date Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 8:04 PM subject Matchstick Message #8: Strategic Key Placement

Dear RIM,

Though I'm usually all for comedy, I don't think it should be at the expense of people with thumbs bigger than the end of a q-tip.

I mean, it seems like every time you write that text to the boy you don't realllly have a crush on anymore, and you think, "should I send it or should I not send it" and then you realize with a jolt of logical reality "No! Of course I shouldn't send it!" and you swiftly move your extremely dexterous thumb down to the Delete key... then for some reason you see your message on the other side of the draft field.

The way I see it, there are three options here: (1) make the Blackberry big enough to accommodate buttons the size of a normal person's fingers, (2) include portable keyboards in that little box that holds the charger and CD when you buy a BlackBerry, or, because neither of those are reasonably cost or space efficient, (3) RIM can stop making phones with the delete key DIRECTLY above the enter key.

If this was done intentionally, it really is the greatest practical joke ever played on humanity. Every time some body makes a mistake... it gets sent!!! Genius!

But if this was not a calculated attempt to mock the thousands of people who rely on their BlackBerry's to communicate, then, RIM, please put the delete key next to something more harmless, like Alt.

Sincerely,

Tara

Comedy Enthusiast

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Matchstick Message #7: Timed battery death

from Tara Raffi to Student Information Requests date Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 7:21 PM subject Matchstick Message #7: Timed battery death

Dear RIM,

So let's talk about batteries, the source of sustenance for our beloved phones. Unlike the imprecise and subjective science of figuring out how long a human can survive without food (how much did they eat last? what was it? are they fat? can the body really eat its own fat in dire circumstances? do they keep kosher?), it is much easier to predict how much time there is left until our battery dies.

This is why we have a battery bar, because software developers are aware that the life of our battery is something they can tell us. But here is my question: who, upon seeing one and a half bars left on their battery (or one millimeter of yellow goo for those of us that use those unfortunate themes) thinks, "Ah ha! I have just enough time to dash home between finance class and my ballet lesson to grab my charger"? What I usually think is, "hm, maybe this will last until after ballet, but maybe not."

Instead, it would be nice to know how much TIME we have left. That is, a battery life indicator expressed in units of time. For example (04:45), would mean you have 4 hours and 45 minutes before you are disconnected from the world.

We all know this is possible. If you press alt+shift+h, you can know what percent of your battery you have left, and RIM should multiply that number by the amount of time it takes to deplete a battery at the rate it is being used. Yes, battery life changes based on your intensity of use or the applications you have running, but the effect of use is measurable. None of this is groundbreaking; Apple figured it out years ago, when the BlackBerry still had a trackwheel on the right side.

RIM: please let us know how much battery we have left in units that make sense. I have heard that some third-party themes provide this luxury, but many of your customers (important businessmen and spoiled kids with short attention spans) don't want to spend hours searching for it online. Especially if they can't find it in the end--like me. And you can even make it an option to cater to those of us who are afraid of the harsh reality.

Sincerely,

Tara Raffi

Reality Enthusiast

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Matchstick Message #6: Editing contacts

from Tara Raffi to Student Information Requests date Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 9:58 PM subject Matchstick Message #6: Editing contacts

Dear RIM,

The problem I'm writing about today tripped me up for a while before I figured out what was going on. This is what happened: when I first got my BlackBerry, I would make a call to a new number, and then I could easily (after wading through the disorganized and unnecessarily long menu) add the contact information into my address book. But what about editing existing contacts?

Let's say I just got a call from "Sebastian Corporate Finance Lecture" and I want to edit this entry to reflect his correct name, "Sebastian Valmont". When in my call log and looking at the entry for his recent call, a parallel process to the one explained above (adding a new contact) would be to press menu and select "edit contact". Alas, this logical option does not exist on the BlackBerry. To edit a contact, even if it is right in front of you in the call log, you must first exit, go to the application menu, find Address Book, search for your contact, press menu again, then scroll to Edit. Why six steps, when it could be just two?

I would say that most people edit their contacts multiple times per week, for many different reasons, including, but not limited to:

1. Editing existing information

2. Adding a Pin number

3. Copying a contact number if somebody asks for it

We BlackBerry users are busy people, and have a lot of important things to think about, so saving us this hassle is worth more than just 6 seconds, it is worth valuable brain real estate. RIM, please add an "edit contact" option to the call log menu, especially if there are silly and much more rarely used options on that menu such as Set Ring Tone and Call From Contacts (when you can just press the designated call button!)

Sincerely,

Tara Raffi

Editing Enthusiast

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Matchstick Message #5: We're not supposed to remember hundreds of email addresses

from Tara Raffi to Student Information Requests date Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 8:38 PM subject Matchstick Message #5: We're not supposed to remember hundreds of email addresses

Dear RIM,

There is a point in time when a certain feature ceases to be an innovation, and just becomes common sense. An excellent example of this can be found in BlackBerry's email application.

This is how I think about it. The list of recent calls that one has made, commonly known as a "call log", is an ancient feature of cell phones. Also, one major reason the BlackBerry appeals to consumers is for its email capabilities, particularly because it has a fixed keyboard. Therefore, it seems logical to apply the capabilities of this phone call log to the email application.

The call log is a good place to go for recently or commonly called contacts, and also to find numbers that are not in ones address book. When writing an email, however, you must either manually input an address or enter a contact that has an email listed for it. But there is no memory for recently used addresses. Why is this a huge problem? Many reasons:

1. Email addresses are not commonly kept in address books, and thus, for BlackBerry's non-enterprise users, are not readily accessible when writing an email. Perhaps for people with exceptionally extensive (or narrowly focused) memories, or the main character in Momento, this is not a problem. But for the rest of us, we (first) get it wrong a few times, (then) send annoying texts to our friends asking them to remind us if it was mayganadhar@berkeley or mdhar@berkeley, or (finally) just download the Gmail application and juggle information between the two programs. This is clearly ridiculous.

2. Users are not motivated to enter email addresses in contact books, and probably will never be. This is because, unlike phone numbers, email addresses usually are pretty good at informing us about the identity of the contact--so we don't need to. Also, when using Gmail on our computers, addresses are automatically indexed by the user's name and come up automatically in the To: field. (If you don't use Gmail, you have much larger user design problems to sort out.)

So basically, the To: fields in the BlackBerry email application should not be linked only to the address book, but also to a list of recent email addresses. As technology becomes an inseparable part of our lives, software developers need to be aware that the way we use and access information should be continually rethought to mirror the way consumers experience the product.

Sincerely,

Tara Raffi

List Enthusiast

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