New icon for incoming calls

[jongpie]

Lately, I've noticed that having a red icon for both missed calls and received calls causes a bit of confusion for me when I'm just taking a quick glance at recent calls. On top of that, the "missed call with voicemail" icon is also red. I know that the text is red for a missed called (and black for a received call), but when I'm just quickly scrolling through, I guess my mind just wants to look at the icons.

I noticed that Google Voice's site uses a blue icon for received calls - could we have that as well? I did a quick before and after to show exactly what I'm talking about.

In my example, I have 3 adjacent calls with "Ricky" (I faked the names, but you get the idea ). At first glance, I think all 3 are missed calls (one with a voicemail), so my gut reaction is that I should call him back. An awkward phone call later, it turns out we had already talked

[Chris]

While I personally agree with you, I'm going to say up front that this has been the topic of much internal debate without any real "conclusion" other than "not to decide is to decide." I entered it in our tracking system for review and very likely more discussion, though.

[jongpie]

Ok, cool - thanks for the update, Chris. Just curious, do you know what the reasoning was for using red on both the received & missed call icons? I'm sure there are pros & cons for both options, but if we at least know the reasoning for why the current solution was chosen, it might help with user discussions here on the forums.

Of course, I'm biased towards my proposed change, but hopefully others will chime in with their opinions as well.

[Chris]

I hesitate to try to explain it because I don't believe I "got" it well enough to do justice to the argument. It was related to sticking with a native iPhone look and feel, but I just compared a test device running 2.2 and one running 3.1.3. Neither of those looked like our Recents list, so maybe ours more closely matches one of the versions between them?

[jongpie]

I love how y'all have stuck with a "native app" design - it's one of the many reasons I use VoiceCentral over Google Voice's own mobile site. But at the same time, I don't think consistency should take priority over functionality/usability.

My rule of thumb is that if I can explain an interface over the phone to a non-savvy user and they understand, it's probably a good interface. For example, it's easy to explain that a green icon is outgoing, a blue is incoming and red is missed (if it has the envelope, then there's a voicemail, but it's still a missed call. But if you want to take it one step further, voicemails could have a different color as well)

With the current setup, you'd have to explain that green is outgoing, red icon with black text is incoming and red icon with red text is missed (and has an envelope when there's a voicemail). You can still explain this, but because red is being used for multiple pieces (icon & text) in different scenarios (received, missed & missed with voicemail), the color almost becomes meaningless.

[Chris]

I agree completely and for all the same reasons.