Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Clemens Morris

We all dread the situation where our phones go off in the middle of a meeting, class or movie theatre. That heart-drop moment when you hear your ringtone echo through the room and everyone knows it’s your fault.

Back in the day when we didn’t have smartphones, most phones, Nokia’s 3310 for example, had “Profiles”. We could switch between a day time profile, theatre profile, evening profile etc. Whatever situation you were in, you could create a profile for it.

Now, looking back at that setup, it’s not very user friendly. Tapping your way through the menus on small screens with tiny buttons, just to find the Profiles page.

When the iPhone was released in 2007, Apple solved that with a quick-fix Ring/Silent switch.

At the time this was an awesome solution! There was no Control Centre, there was no Siri, the safest and easiest way to make sure your phone was on silent was with the switch.

When comparing the original iPhone with this year’s iPhone X, the Ring/Silent switch has stayed nearly identical.
We still have that nice click when switching between the two states and still have that orange/red inlay when the phone is on silent.

But my question is, do we still need it there?

How do other phone manufacturers solve this problem?

Most phone manufacturers have opted for a software solution, with the exception of some OnePlus and Xiaomi phones.
If this problem is obviously solvable with software, without major outrage by users complaining of not finding a way to mute their android devices, why does Apple insist on having this physical switch?

The new Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE comes packed with an e-Sim inside, letting you receive and make calls on the go without having to be tethered to the iPhone, but the Apple Watch manages fine without a mute switch.
A quick swipe up to the Control Centre from any watch face let’s you toggle “silent” and “theatre” modes.

This would easily be possible on the iPhone!

BUT!
The feeling of clicking the slider into place is really reassuring. Even when you’re phone is out of battery you KNOW it’ll be on mute when it turns back on.
We’re all incredibly used to flicking that switch on and off. We were all used to having the Sleep button on the top of the iPhone and we were all used to having a Home Button.

How I would solve this:

With the custom Control Centre in iOS 11, users could rearrange the silent and theatre toggles to wherever they would get to them easiest.
Just placing the icons there and removing them from the phones chassis however would be lazy and somewhat underwhelming.

We need to add some value, something to justify removing the satisfying switch.
One way to add some value would be to have time sensitive muting. 3D Touch on the icon and you trigger a selector for the length of time you would like to put your phone on silent for.
This would let you step into the movie theatre and set your phone to silent for 2 hours or so and when the time is up, your phone is back on loud.

Silent Toggle in the Control Centre and the duration selector

What if we were to go further and add Siri to the picture?

Let’s say you’re adding that super important job interview to your calendar and you have the location added, the travel time set up, your notes in place. You get there perfectly on time, walk in, the interview is going well but then…that dead awkward song you have as your ringtone starts blaring and you’ve blown it.
Ok, this is a little over the top, but a little added line in the Calendar entry would have saved you there, letting you set your phone to silent for the duration of the meeting.

Calendar Cell and Expanded Notification

Letting Siri ask you 3 minutes before a meeting if you’d like to have your phone on silent, or having her set it to silent in that first Yoga session.
There are a bunch of situations where Siri could help out and it would be a far more enjoyable experience than just flicking a switch on the side of your phone.

With the iPhone X ushering in the next 10 years of the iPhone, the silent switch just seems quite outdated to me. Maybe in iPhones to come we’ll see this switch disappear and make way for an even sleeker and cleaner design.

Let me know in the comments how you would feel about a software solution for muting your phone!

A closer look at the Ring/Silent switch was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A closer look at the Ring/Silent switch

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