Small Wonders

Don Richardson’s tiny new cell phone turned out to be more cumbersome than convenient. About the size of a candy bar, the phone fit neatly in his pocket, but Richardson always hit too many buttons at once and the mouthpiece ended up in the middle of his cheek.

Frustrated, the 6-foot, 7-inch postmaster from Los Angeles finally ditched the dinky device in favor of a model with bigger buttons and a mouthpiece that actually reached his mouth.

“I’m big,” he said. “Everything I buy is big.”

Most of the technological gear around him is small--and getting smaller. Devices from computers to radios once too bulky to carry around now get lost in the bottom of a purse.

Sony’s newest Walkman stereos, for instance, are the size of cigarette lighters, and the lightest cell phones weigh just 2ounces.

It’s taken only 10 years for mobile phones to shrink from the size of briefcases to credit cards, but the fingers fumbling with tiny buttons haven’t changed much in 10,000 years. Human beings don’t evolve nearly as quickly as their gadgetry.

There are limits.

Like Richardson, some users grouse that phone buttons are too puny to push. Others complain that they can’t read the display on their pagers. Frustrated by Lilliputian devices, some forgo the latest technology to stick with big, comfortable, clunky stuff.

Although plenty of petite products line store shelves, they’re not necessarily the most popular.

At 5.2 inches tall, the Nokia 5165--AT&T;’s best-selling mobile phone--is more than an inch longer than Nokia’s smallest model.

Tiny technology has been a sign of status since the invention of the pocket watch in the 16th century.

But the difference between fashionably small and impossibly small is, well, small.

“If it’s too big, you don’t carry it with you. It’s a burden. Portability and constant communication are lost,” said Donald Norman, author of “The Invisible Computer” and “The Design of Everyday Things.” “But if it’s too small, then the device itself gets lost.”

Although most consumers notice that electronic gear loses inches and ounces every few months, designers and manufacturers constantly grapple over how big to make their products.

What size something ultimately ends up often is as much a function of expectation and culture as technological and ergonomic limitations.

Historically, technology dictated the size of a device. Early pocket watches were limited by the metal gears and springs inside. Bulky mobile phones needed big batteries to power them. TV sets housed huge picture tubes.

But with solid-state circuitry and tiny lithium-ion batteries, portable electronics can be even smaller than they already are.

“If you do the naive thing, making things smaller is almost always making things harder to use,” said Joseph Konstan, a computer science and engineering professor at the University of Minnesota.

Ultimately, designers try to “hit the sweet spot,” the point where a gadget’s form and function combine to create a device with which users are comfortable interacting, said Frank Nuovo, vice president and chief designer for Nokia.

That sweet spot can be defined.

The width of a depressed fingertip, for example, ranges from about three-eighths of an inch to half an inch. Designers have the technical ability to create much smaller buttons, but doing so could render them unusable.

Likewise, most people can discern characters displayed on a screen that are about a quarter-inch high for every seven feet away they are.

Sometimes it’s not size that matters most. The alignment and spacing of buttons can make small devices easier to use. Research in Motion spent five years perfecting the miniature keyboard on its popular Blackberry two-way pager. The buttons are only a quarter-inch across, but they are widely spaced and slightly curved.

“It’s not so much a matter of what we’re capable of doing but how we implement it that’s important,” said Robert Beaton, associate professor and director of the Displays and Controls Laboratory and ErgoNorms Compliance Center at Virginia Tech.

In other words, manufacturers need to think about how a device will be used, not just how small they can make it.

When RKS Design Inc. in Thousand Oaks began developing the prototype for a wristwatch with an address book and the calendar features of a personal organizer, designers studied how people use other small devices. Watching consumers play with camera watches, pager watches and watches that play digital music, they heard a common complaint: Buttons are too small.

Designers then looked at watches--2,000 of them--to determine an acceptable size from a fashion perspective, said RKS President and Chief Executive Ravi Sawhney. That turned out to be too big. Those who tested the first prototype liked the device but thought it should be smaller, Sawhney said. So designers reduced its size by about 30% to “the smallest size practical,” 1.9 inches by 2.2 inches.

To do that, “the whole guts had to be redone,” Sawhney said.

The developers re-laid all the circuits and chips. The final design of the watch, which is scheduled to debut this month, includes a navigation button similar to the eraser-like nub found on some laptops. Users manipulate the button, which is about three-eighths of an inch in diameter, to scroll across the screen and press down on it to select entries.

“There may be an appropriate size that may not be as small as you can make it,” Sawhney said.

Size alone was the objective for designers of the Rex 6000. They wanted to develop a personal digital assistant small enough that a person could tote it around without thinking about it--what they called an “unconscious carry,” like a wristwatch.

But to maintain the hand-held’s credit card size, designers had to limit what it could do.

Popular features such as voice activation, a color screen and e-mail capabilities were omitted because they would have made the 1.4-ounce device larger.

Intel Corp., which took over Rex manufacturer Xircom Inc. last summer, recently discontinued the micro-PDA after less than a year on the market.

Anthropologists study how people use technology in the real world, which in turn influences its design. They follow teenagers through malls to see how they use their mobile phones on the go.

They also examine how people commute, how they socialize and even how they hang around the house.

“It’s not just about the chips anymore,” said Genevieve Bell of Intel’s Corporate Technology Group. “It’s about where they are and what they do.”

Location and function play a major role in how big something ends up. For instance, kitchen toasters could be much smaller than they are. But people expect toasters to be a certain size and shape, Sawhney said.

“Toasters could probably be much slimmer than they are, but anthropologically we think that cooking doesn’t occur in small, little devices,” Sawhney said. “It’s a big pot of stew. It’s a big oven.”

Sawhney and designers like him use psycho-aesthetics--the ability of a device’s design to communicate its benefits--to entice consumers.

So a radio’s small size might convey the notion of portability, but its bright colors and chubby buttons communicate ease of use.

One size, however, does not fit all.

Physical limitations, such as reduced dexterity in older adults and developing motor skills in children, require that devices built for them have exaggerated buttons and displays.

Because Asians generally have smaller hands than North Americans, products developed for Asia often are even tinier than those built for the West.

Hand controls for Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox video game console, for example, are about 15% larger in the United States than in Japan.

When Sony Corp. introduced its FX series laptop computer in 1997, it was an “instant hit” in the United States, said Mike Abary, senior marketing manager for Vaio micro notebooks.

The computers initially didn’t sell as well in Japan, where smaller micro notebooks are popular.

In many Asian households, a laptop is the primary computer because there is little room for a bulkier desktop machine. The laptop can be folded up and stored on a shelf like a book.

In Europe, where most socializing takes place outside the home, it’s more difficult to impress the neighbors with fancy entertainment systems. Instead, people display their wealth with their mobile gear.

“We’re at this moment where people are starting to realize technology is not this neutral thing,” Bell said.

That’s particularly true as devices begin to share functions. Wristwatches store phone numbers. Hand-held computers take pictures. Digital cameras play music. Gadgets that do more than one thing or connect to the Internet need screens large enough to display several lines of text.

Or maybe they don’t.

Devices may someday become so small that they are almost invisible, creating a true melding of man and machine.

You can only take products so far without redefining what they are in principle,” said Nuovo, the Nokia designer.

Sawhney, who teaches a class at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, asked his students to develop cellular phone concepts for 2005.

Among them: An ear bud that rings internally and is answered by tapping the tongue against the teeth.

Wireless applications offer even more possibilities, said Konstan of the University of Minnesota.

If a person’s personal digital assistant can sync with a free-standing computer terminal, users can input data on standard keyboards and large screens and save the information on tiny, personal devices.

That appeals to Alfred Salazar, who runs a legal-document service and needs to keep in touch.

He started with a big Motorola device, switched to a smaller Nokia and finally settled on an even smaller Ericsson five months ago. Clipped to his belt, it’s barely noticeable under his shirt.

“The smaller, the better,” he said. “As it is, you’ve got your change, you’ve got your car keys.... Another 3 or 4 ounces makes a difference.”

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Christine Frey covers personal technology. She can be reached atchristine.frey@latimes.com.