A Word On User-Hostile Design: Press T to Focus

by Carlo Longino on 08. Oct, 2008 in Mobile Phone Evolution

I took that pic in my last post with my Nokia E71. I’ve been really happy with this device since I started using it about six weeks ago, except for the camera. It’s been taking fairly awful pictures, even under good conditions. The first pic I took of that WSJ ad was so blurry, the text at the bottom was unreadable. The camera simply didn’t seem to be adjusting its focus at all.

I’m thinking 3.2 megapixels, autofocus, my past experience with Nokia cameraphones… something isn’t right here. So I shoot an email over to Rafe from All About Symbian, asking if he thought the pic was particularly bad for an E71. Rafe responded that he thought it was worse than the ones he usually took, and that pressing the T key on the E71 to autofocus was a bit tempermental.

Wait. T to autofocus? So I try again, hitting T this time, and as you can see, the results were much better. But T to focus? I’m sure somebody will pop up with a “RTFM” comment, fair enough. But am I so obtuse that I’m the only person to whom pressing T to make the camera focus isn’t intuitive at all? It doesn’t make sense to me. I’d simply, and wrongly, assumed that pressing the center of the D-pad to snap the image would engage the autofocus, like pressing the shutter button on my N82 and N71 (and my Sony Ericsson K750 before that, if you want to keep going back) did. Oh well, live and learn, as long as I’ve got Rafe to email.

But at the very least, I’d have appreciated a “Press T to focus” message on screen.

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  • dgduris
    I had a Series 60 Phone a couple of years ago (E62 on ATT) after a P910a (UIQ)and 10+ years of experience with EPOC (from shence the Symbian OS sprang).

    That S60 phone is the reason for my now using WinMob. Why? No documentation on the shortcuts. No comprehensive guide to be found on them (even on AllAboutSymbian). Nothing. I became totally frustrated - the fact that the E62 was far, far slower than the P910 it was replacing didn't help. But, the Symbian guys have some work to do here to improve the UE (User Experience) for newbies.
  • In fairness to Nokia, the E71's cam is a bit of an afterthought, in part forced by the un-camera-like form factor. Adding forced focus and capture to the d-pad would have been just as horrible (as on the HTC Touch Diamond, etc). And 't' is used because it's the closest key to the d-pad. BUT - I'll agree that it would have taken a programmer all of 30 seconds to add a 'press 't' to focus' pop-up reminder.
  • this is so brilliant an example that i think we should adopt 'press T to focus' as a description for any user experience oddity (via Mippin Mobile)
  • I've stated before that the camera on the E71 is completely useless, though not because of the quality it offers - because it's incredibly inconvenient to *use*.

    Rather than encroaching on Nseries territory (supposedly) and putting a freakin camera button on the thing, which would have allowed ONE button for all camera-related functions, Nokia left it off. Thus, from the home screen, you're forced to activate a shortcut (let's say, for sake of argument, the right softkey). Then you press the T button, then you press the center d-pad to actually take the picture.

    Aside from the fact that most users, like you, don't know that the T stands for 'auTofocus', E71 users must remember - and press - three DIFFERENT buttons, just to snap a picture! It's obscene.

    What's worse is that I'm convinced that even if there *was* a camera button on the E71, it wouldn't actually open the camera. How do I know this? Cause I've got an E90, and reviewed the E66 for MobileBurn already, and while both of those phones have a two-stage camera button (autofocus and shutter), neither of them allowed the button to actually OPEN the camera, which is completely silly.
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