The New York Times ran an article yesterday (Mar. 31) about feature creep: the growing number of features in modern cell phones and the corresponding inability of end-users to access those functions as the devices become more complex.

Increasing complexity, especially for a mass market device, is an enemy of a good user experience (UX). It's a difficult problem to solve because of the limited size of display screens on mobiles and the limited input interface.

More features do not mean a better mobile phone.

Most people don't use most of the functions that come with their mobile phones. Either they don't need those functions or it's too complicated to use them.

So why do mobile phones come with an increasing number of features that are increasingly difficult to access?

The problem is, as the article goes on to describe, you are not the customer. Surprised? Don't be.

Who is the customer? The mobile network operator -- the company that provides you with your cell phone service. By manufacturing phones with more functions and features that use the network, they are able to increase their average revenue per user (ARPU). Do you want to download a ringtone? Pay up. How about if you want to send an SMS message? Pay for it. Do you want to share a photo or video with your friends? Shell out. Look up something on the Web? You get the idea. More features means more of your cash going to your provider. So whom do you think manufacturers listen to when designing the next generation of phones? Their customers, the network operators.

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > It's Not Just a Phone, It's an Adventure

"The buttons on the sides are a bit annoying," he said. They seem to do different things when the phone is open and when it is closed.

His biggest complaint is that the phone insists on making noise at every opportunity. "You can't even turn it off without it making a sound," he said, noting that when he tried to discreetly silence the phone at a concert, it squawked.
...
Practically every new iteration of cellphone promises more: digital music, streaming video, 3-D video games, location-based navigation and full Internet browsing, not to mention a camera. With more features often come more buttons, complications and costs, and thicker operating manuals.

The excerpts I've chosen above illustrate some serious problems for the average cell phone user.

Changing the functions of the keys based on context (open or closed / in-use or on-standby) is now accepted as a standard in modern mobile phones, but it's a compromise that meets with limited success. The key factor in implementing context-sensitive functions is to make the end-user aware that the state of a particular key has changed. Make it blatantly obvious that a button does something different when in different modes. It seems that Motorola has failed to do so clearly enough for Mr. Azlin's V60.

The noise-making problem is a familiar one to me as well. I was recently testing a phone that made obnoxiously loud sounds at every turn, even when it was supposedly in silent mode. The most ridiculous problem was a very loud beep that it emitted every few minutes to warn that the battery was low  which, in turn, further drained the battery, necessitating more urgent low-battery warnings. I suppose the idea was make sure the user knew the phone had a weak battery. I would have preferred that the energy used for the alert go to extend the standby and talk time of the phone and I suspect that most people would share that preference. Instead, I just turned the phone off. The alert feature was irritating to the point where it was more desirable to have absolutely no use of the phone rather than tolerate the nuisance.

When was the last time you read through the entire manual for your cell phone? I don't know about you but, when I get a phone, I want it to work extremely well as a phone and deliver a clear and high-quality signal. I want that functionality without having to read a massive manual. In rushing to include new features it seems that some manufacturers are losing sight of this. If it can do other things, that's a bonus. "Complicated" is not a quality that should be ascribed to increasingly common and essential communication devices like mobile phones.

I've yet to meet a person to lists "complicated to use" as a desirable feature. Yet there is a sense that if one's phone can do more things then it offers better value for money. When choosing a phone, the question to ask is this: What do you need, what do you want and what do plan to use it for? (OK, three questions.) Once you know the answers to those questions, choosing and using a phone should be a much easier process without adding the complication of those poorly implemented extras. Why pay for features that you will never use, make your life more difficult or simply don't want?

There are a variety of solutions to the problems outlined above, but each has its own drawback.

One solution is turn the display into a touchscreen and use software to activate various functions as in the HandSpring/PalmOne Treo 600 smartphone. Features like that are currently reserved for higher-end phones because of the cost of production. That will change with time as component prices fall.

Speech recognition is another solution. We are beginning to see it in a limited capacity when using "voice dialing" but that technology has been around for years in personal computers and automated telephone directory inquiries that use limited vocabularies and commands. It should be possible to implement natural language recognition in mobile phones, especially with the increasing power and capability of these mobile computers. This eventually means that mobile phone users could invoke functions by voice command -- much like the computer in the Star Trek TV shows and movies -- instead of manually navigating through an arcane and intricate series of menus. And you thought that people talking on their phones in inappropriate places was annoying. Wait until they start talking to their phones.

Still another solution is to provide a customizable interface or, better yet, design and interface that adapts itself to the needs of the user. Instead of a fixed set of controls, let the user choose which features are available to them, with the rest hidden just out of sight until they are required. Or let a bit of intelligence within the hardware adjust the interface to display the most frequently used features more prominently than those seldom used. There is the opportunity for confusion with this solution by moving away from a standardized interface, but since phones tend to be very personal devices the advantages would almost certainly outweigh the drawbacks.

Ultimately it's up to the manufacturers and their designers to realize that the best way to maintain and grow market share is to create cell phones that offer a great UX and are desirable to use. Then let the end-users demand those products from the network operators.

• Slide Show: New mobile phone designs (New York Times)