NetGear’s Skype Phone

With the availability of Wi-Fi in many pockets across the country, especially university campuses and metro areas such as New Orleans and San Francisco, perhaps the NetGear Skype Phone might be a good investment. VoIP has proven itself to be a viable competitor to POTS (Plain Old Telephone System), and with devices such as this, you’d no longer need a desktop computer to make or receive calls.

This does push more towards what I’m working on as part of my dissertation: that each device performs one job, and does it really well. And interaction designers should take all these devices into account and design for the entire ecosystem of devices rather than just designing for one device and porting to the others. We call that the holistic approach to design!

So, what I should be able to do, eventually, is to use this phone in conjuction with other devices: for example, dial a number from my computer address book via Bluetooth or something, or have it pause my iPod automatically when I have an incoming call, or route the audio to the headset I’m already wearing, without having to fumble around. If I miss a call or two, I should be able to get to my voicemail at my desk via a larger desktop-sized UI, because there’s so much more I can do with a desktop than a phone-sized UI. A bit of a stretch, but while we’re at it, what the heck: I should also be able to listen to my voicemail via a browser in case I’m in a location with no Wi-Fi coverage, or say, in another country.

This is just the beginning!