"This rotary phone in the office is perfectly fine and usable! The new-hires just need to learn how it works, and then it's the exact same thing."
Further, I have witnessed people not understand rotary phones. Plunk one down in front of 10 teenagers and I would wager few indeed would intuit it immediately.
Regardless, on the topic of drawing new users, if the users truly are "new", then any look will be unfamiliar to them, but yes, luring users over from competitors may be tricky.
I don't really know about the dated look, though. For example in computer UI design we had flat, then went shapely, then went flat again. It reminds me of architecture: there is always the disconnect between people who like an older style (like when Classical Mediterranean architecture came back in vogue and we saw a bunch of public buildings being built with all pillars and triangles) and people who want some kind of new experimental style (like when Jugendstil started appearing).
There is always a balance that can be found between finding a presentation that aligns with market trends and a presentation that stands out and draws attention. It's up to the people running the show where on the axis they decide to plant themselves.
Well, your example was training a chimpanzee to do it vs. can teenagers use it without training. And I think they can and maybe even think it is cool, but unless you want to harness that coolness retro factor it makes 0 sense to use a rotary phone for actual use. It is way slower and therefore less efficient. But of course it would beat a modern phone that just looks cool, but only randomly works.
Which would be my requirement for any tool. Functionality first, looks second.
To get some traction and momentum to actually become a serious alternative. New users can also mean new funds and not just more work(like it should be), like for example the blender foundation is proofing that this is possible. Make something that really works and once some actual buisnesses are using it, there will be ways for funding it.
Constantly evolving UI thought experiments are largely responsible for the sorry state of software today.
Maybe the new-hires need a healthy dose of shut-up-and-listen, and do need to learn how it works.
An operator is like Siri or Alexa, but capable of passing a Turing test.
- you can blindly hit the keys on a dial pad if you remember their position, on a rotary you probably need to count the clicks
- on a rotary you probably can’t look back at the number you already inputed
- traditional ones won’t have * and #
- no speakerphone feature, which many older people would benefit of
- no mute
- no phone number memory/speed dial
It’s actually fun to think about how much it has changed since the earlier phones, as the land lines are progressively getting obsoleted as well.
I could imagine a modern version of the rotary UI, as a swipe input interface for instance, but it would still be clunky IMO
Attempting to paint "strong usability" through the lens of existing users only (the guy who already knows how to use a rotary phone) is a lopsided view of the goals for an app creator.