2. 考研
  3. Those days are long gone when placing a telephone call meant simply picking up the receiver and asking the operator to patch you

Those days are long gone when placing a telephone call meant simply picking up the receiver and asking the operator to patch you

admin2019-09-30  112
问题     Those days are long gone when placing a telephone call meant simply picking up the receiver and asking the operator to patch you through. Modern cell phones require users to navigate a series of menus to find numbers, place calls or check messages. Even the most tech-savvy may take weeks to discover some of the more mysterious multimedia functions. Imagine the difficulty for someone unable to read.
    That is the challenge for mobile communications companies aiming to branch out into developing countries. The prospects seen from the last decade are alluring: only about one tenth of India’s population use cell phones. But selling to poor rural areas is not likely to happen with a marketing version of "plug and play." Most potential buyers have little exposure to anything other than simple electronics. Reading through a series of hierarchical menus and pushing buttons for multiple purposes would be new concepts for such customers.
    To come up with a suitable device, Motorola relied on a team of anthropologists, psychologists and designers to study how textually illiterate villagers use their aging televisions, tape players and phones. The researchers noticed that their subjects would learn each button’s dedicated function. With something more complicated, such as an automated teller machine, users would memorize a set of behaviors in order, which allowed them to move through the machine’s basic hierarchy without having to read the menu.
    The research, which lasted three years, led Motorola to craft a cellular phone slimmed down to three essential activities: calling, managing numbers and simple text messaging. "A lot of the functions in a cell phone are not useful to anyone," points out Gabriel White, who headed the interactive design team. The icon-based interface also required thought.
    Not all cell phone companies believe that a design for nonliterate users should start from scratch. Nokia’s behavioral researchers noticed that "newbies" rely on friends and relatives to help them with basic functions. Rather than confronting the challenge of a completely new interface, Nokia chose to provide some audio menus in its popular 1100 model and a preview mode so that people could try out functions without the risk of changing anything important. Mobile phones may even become tools for literacy, predicts BJ Fogg, who studies computer-human interaction at Stanford University. Phones might teach the alphabet or tell a story as users read along. "Imagine if it eventually could understand your weak points and drill you on those," Fogg proposes. And soon enough, he declares, designs or illiterate users will lead to more straightforward, elegant phones for everyone.
The sales of mobile phones to poor rural areas may be impossible probably because most potential buyers
选项 A、have difficulty with menus of multiple purposes.
B、cannot accept new concepts of mobile phones.
C、only read menus and push buttons of simple electronics.
D、do not like the marketing strategy of "plug and play".
答案A
解析 事实细节题，考查因果细节及转折细节。根据poor rural areas定位到第二段，段中But信号词提示新信息出现的地方，这段内容提到一些营销策略在贫困的农村地区行不通，因为那里的大多数潜在买家没有接触过复杂的电子产品，也就无法理解复杂菜单和按钮操作，故选A项。
转载请注明原文地址:https://www.kaotiyun.com/show/hSe4777K
0

考研英语二

相关试题推荐
随机试题
最新回复(0)