1174385 - [Dialer] When you receive a call during an existing call, it's unclear what the red button halfway down on the left will do

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: Gaia::Dialer, defect)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

STR:
 1. Place a phone call. (e.g. call your voicemail)
 2. Receive an incoming call, during your existing phone call.
--> you'll see something like:
   https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=8621942

 3. Try and guess what each of the buttons are going to do.

ACTUAL RESULTS:
The buttons are hard to decipher (particularly the red button halfway down on the left). Given that it's next to the button that picks up the incoming call, you might suspect that it'll hang up on the incoming call. But it doesn't! Instead, it:
 a) hangs up on the *current* call
 b) briefly flashes a screen with options to hang up or pick up on the incoming call
 c) before you can react to that flashed screen, it goes ahead and picks up the existing call.

Mostly-ignore the weird overlapping aspect of the button at the bottom; I filed bug 1174380 on that.

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screenshot (ignore weird overlapping glitch at the bottom; that's bug 1174380)

Comment 2

[Doug Sherk (:drs) (inactive)]

Carrie, was this intentional? It sounds like a regression to me, but I don't remember exactly what these buttons are supposed to do.

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screenshot

(Reposting screenshot, with the confusing button more clearly labeled)

Comment 4

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

drs had the following guess at the button functionalities (his guess is incorrect, but understandable) when we were discussing in IRC:

 <drs> my impression upon seeing this would be as follows:
 <drs> the red button on the middle-left would ignore the incoming call
 <drs> the green button on the middle-right would answer the incoming call
       and put the previously ongoing one on hold
 <drs> the red button on the bottom would hang up the ongoing call and do
       nothing with the incoming call

In fact, the red left-button & the bottom button have the exact opposite functions of what he guessed. This is somewhat clarified by the "Ignore" label on the bottom button (though it's less-clear because there's another mysterious red button hiding under that one, which is bug 1174380).

I see Doug's logic everywhere else, when we have side-by-side red/green buttons for an incoming phone call, the red one hangs up on the phone call and the green one picks up. It seems like this might be what those buttons will do for the incoming call.

I can see the logic in the actual functions of these buttons, too, though.  (They're on the section of the screen for the current call, so it makes some sense that this is the call that they'll control.) But I wonder if the function of the left button in particular could be more clearly surfaced somehow...

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

> I see Doug's logic everywhere else, when we [...]

(er, I left out a semicolon after "logic" there. :))

Comment 6

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

One other subtlety -- I think either (b) or (c) in comment 0 must be a bug.  I'm not sure what the intended behavior is here, so I'm not sure which part is the bug.

(specifically: right now, after you hit the red button on the left, we briefly flash a full-screen pick-up/hang-up dialog, prompting the user about how to handle the new call -- but before the user can respond, we jump to an in-call screen for the new call. If we're going to flash the intermediate pick-up/hang-up screen, we should actually *stay there* and *let the user* decide what to do. Alternately: if we really intend to auto-pick-up the new call after the red button is pressed, we should bypass the intermediate screen, so we don't end up giving the user the brief illusion that we're going to let them decide how to handle the new call.)

Comment 7

[Gabriele Svelto [:gsvelto]]

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #0)
>  b) briefly flashes a screen with options to hang up or pick up on the
> incoming call
>  c) before you can react to that flashed screen, it goes ahead and picks up
> the existing call.

Those look like genuine bugs caused by the state transitions between the various bits. They also sound like regressions as I don't remember seeing them happen in the past. As for the buttons they work as per the UX specs IIRC; I wasn't working on the dialer at the time they were implemented so I'm not sure why it was decided to make the buttons look/work that way.

Comment 8

[Johan Lorenzo [:jlorenzo]]

(In reply to Doug Sherk (:drs) (use needinfo?) from comment #2)
> Carrie, was this intentional? It sounds like a regression to me, but I don't
> remember exactly what these buttons are supposed to do.

As far as I remember, these buttons are intentional. This is not a regression. Nevertheless, I must admit, I've been confused by the red button once too (see bug 1109117). It might be a good time to change them.

Comment 9

[Carrie Wang [New account: [e-mail]]]

Hi, 

This is intentional. The design was implemented before I took over Dialer but I understand the logic here. If users tap the red button, the current call will be hung up and the incoming call is connected. 
If users tap the blue "Hold" button, the current call will be put on hold and the incoming call will be connected (and then users can switch between calls). 
If users tap the "Ignore" button at the bottom, the incoming call will be rejected and the current call will continue. 

The design is different on GSM and CDMA because of the technical issue. I agree that this is quite confusing. We may get a chance to redesign it later. Thanks!

Comment 10

[BMO Automation]

Firefox OS is not being worked on