Andrea Taylor, a former Interaction Design student at the Royal College of Art, redesigned a mobile phone to “encourage people to exercise polite mobile phone manners”[1].

Taylor's phone has a sense of self. It becomes indignant when the user behaves in an improper manner; it reprimands the owner by ‘shouting back’ if they speak too loudly and scrambles messages and caller ID’s to discourage use in inappropriate places.

If it is left unanswered the phone begins to panic (Image 1); the ring volume increases (Image 2) and the caller identification display becomes confused (Image 3). Its continued distress causes the battery to run down and eventually, exhausted by its panicked state, it 'passes out'. When recovered, the phone reprimands the owner, informing them of the consequences of their actions (Image 4).

Unfortunately the webpage describing this project is no longer active on the RCA Interaction Design website.