The Cooper Interaction Design Test PART II
Problem: Design a telephone with a B&W LCD display and answering machine functions.

Maria's Solution:
This is Sally.

Because Sally is a stick figure, she isn't good with complicated machines and she is easily distracted. Sally needs a phone with voice mail, and she wants to be able to open the box and begin using her new phone right away. She also wants to be able to see who has called --If her boyfriend calls, she wants to be able to skip ahead to his message and listen to the others later. Sally has a roommate, Susan, and gets very annoyed if Susan doesn't let her know there is a new message. Sometimes Sally keeps a message on the machine, like if her boyfriend recites a poem, but mostly she deletes the messages. Sally lives in a different area code from many of her friends, so she needs to keep track of how long she talks for each call.

This is the MessagePhone.

The MessagePhone shows Sally the number she has dialed and the time elapsed for the call. When there are new calls, she sees a red light, and the red light will stay on --even if Susan listens to the messages-- until the new messages have been saved or deleted. When there are messages, they are listed in order with an identifying number, the originating phone number, the date, and the time. Sally pushes "Play" to hear her messages, from the familiar buttons that look like her radio and VCR. She can stop, pause, and skip forward or backward just like she does on her other devices. She can also skip directly to her boyfriend's message by pushing the corresponding number on the keypad. Sally saves his poems by pushing "Save Current". She can listen to the poem her boyfriend left last week by pushing "Go to Saved". When her mother calls she usually pushes "Delete Current".

For example, on the day Sally bought the phone, she took it out of the box and plugged it in. Right away she called her good friend, Barry, and the phone looked like this:

Then she went shopping. When she returned, there were three messages...

She pushed the "Play" button to hear them, and decided to save two of them. Because the first message was from her boyfriend, she wanted to hear it again immediately after saving it. Sally pushed "Go to Saved" and listened to it again.