ABSTRACT
Although cell phone has become very popular and much more innovative these days, most input interfaces still rely on the sense of sight. In order to improve the usability and convenience of using a cell phone for the visually impaired and average people undcr special circumstances, this research take telephone call as example and devclop two sets of tactile buttons that can be used under non-visual situation by touch alone. The first set contains two kinds of function buttons and the second set has two kinds of number buttons. In the research we use non-visual experiment, think-aloud protocol and interview to test the design of tactile buttons and analyze the cognitive behavior of users. The result shows that participants can do better with tactile buttons comparing with traditional ones. They tend to recognize shapes according to clear edge outlines and be able to distinguish several basic features, which could be !cad to the guidelines for tactile buttons design.
