An Analysis of Telephone Messages: Minimizing Unproductive Replay Time

This paper reports the results of a research project to study the nature and structure of phone messages and the design characteristics of phone messaging systems that would optimize the retrieval of relevant message information. Of particular concern with respect to the structure of a phone message was the location of a phone number left in the message. In order to replay any portion of a message, most messaging systems require the user to listen to the message from its beginning. Because it was found that phone numbers are typically left towards the end of a message, such a system is quite inefficient. One proposed solution is the implementation of a "back" button. A simple equation is employed to optimize the length of time encompassed by the back button, which would result in substantial time savings to users at least 17 seconds per message in which it was used. The ramifications of such time savings are discussed.