Beginning this week, you can find a new prototype at the front desk of the Woodridge Neighborhood Library.
We call it the “classic 1970s” telephone. Picking up the handset immediately connects listeners to the same storytelling hotline that is in the museum. Listeners can hear excerpts from oral histories from the Right to the City exhibit, or leave new stories of their own.
Continue reading Front desk at the library: “classic 1970s” telephone prototypeBeyond nostalgia, the immediate recognition of a classic phone is very useful to set expectations. New kinds of interactivity are often very hard for people to figure out. Visual clues to signal the right verbs (or “frame the mechanics”) are invaluable.
For our recent library desk installation, we used a model that has 80 years of strong visual similarity, and is nearly identical to the 1974 version.
Ours was $45 from Walmart, purchase in 2018:
Touch-tone only arrived in 1963. Here is the 1964 version, which looks remarkably similar:
Continue reading Origin story: “Classic 1970s” Telephone
If the payphone is to be a serious actor in our storytelling system, we must ensure a proper stage!
Continue reading Making the “Desk Payphone” (for the Storytelling System)
For this outdoor festival hosted by the National Park Service, we tested the “desk payphone” outdoors. Our tents were at the far left, alongside activity stations for families.
