Diagrams and the configuration of telecommunications devices

摘要

In the telecommunications industry, opportunities for improving the design of information abound. The devices within telecommunications networks are enormously complex and their generally crude user interfaces do little to ease operators' tasks. Compounding the problem is that there is little tolerance for error. Telecommunications providers prefer that their networks never experience unplanned outages, and even planned outages are just tolerated. By and large the telecommunications industry does not seem to have experienced the same focus on user-interface quality that, say, e-commerce has. It may be that speed of deployment, operator training, and tradition are the main reasons for this. Telecommunications is a very competitive industry, and speed of delivering features is paramount. The approach seems to be to train the operator to deal with the equipment after the fact rather than to design the equipment with the goal of reducing operator error. Whatever the causes, the effect is that the telecommunications industry generally relies on documentation and training, rather than interface design, to address its user-interface problems.