This missing element of that analysis is that in the smartphone era you almost never type out a phone number. You were texted it and click on it, see it on the web and click on it, found the company on Google maps and click on it...
The dial-pad may be too difficult to reach on our big screens now, but the momentum required to change it will never exist because it simply doesn't get enough use to be a pain point anymore.
Excellent write up and use of graphics though. The Bell labs part was really interesting.
Phone numbers are also entered into contacts and other places with the number pad keyboard. The numpad keyboard works better on bigger screens than the full dial pad since it occupies bottom of screen.
Replacing the dial pad with the numpad keyboard would solve the problem and not require custom layout. It would also be more consistent across applications that do calls instead of having a special dial pad for the phone app.
but in the smartphone era how many times do we type the number. usually friends' numbers are stored in the contacts, any phone numbers found on websites accessible through phone are tap and dial. I imagine you need to type a phone number only when you find it outside your smartphone.
Most of my dailing is done via voice, phone URL or stored contact.
Most of my time in dialpad is spent entering digits for automated systems (e.g. "press 1 to join meeting" or "dial meeting code then #" or "press 0 to talk to a receptionist").
Great point about automated systems. Now I'm imagining a future where there's better telecom integration so that the phone tree options are integrated into the caller's UI.
For example, speaking to your cell phone company, you could see:
That sounds like it'd require a huge overhaul to the phone system. At which point... why do the telcos even need to be involved here? VoIP is common enough now that you could just have a menu system before the call and trigger a VoIP call to the right department automatically.
And heck, let's get rid of phone queues while we're at it - just have the agent trigger a callback rather than making them listen to an awful hold music loop for potentially upwards of 15 minutes.
This just sort of seems like DVORAK layouts to me. A possibility that it MAY be more efficient, just not enough increase in efficiency to make it ever worth it to change, especially in a world where there is no real evidence its actually more efficient.
Also I find that doing standard dialing is pretty rare these days, and so low mental load, that I think I wasted more brain cycles reading this than I have ever just dialing a number.
I'd be soooo happy though if phones and keyboard numpads had the same layout (rather than being inverted horizontally. No preference for either, just want them to be the same.)
To me, none of these seems like a real improvement, and they all have drawbacks.
Part of the reason the current layout works is because it is well chunked. You have 123 on top, 456 in the middle, and 789 on the bottom. 0 and functional keys, which often serve their own purpose, get their own row. Four sets of three, nicely like the way our minds like to remember numerals and sets of numerals. Shape-wise, 1-9 are in a square, in numerical order from left to right just like a paragraph, then the others continue the pattern to a lesser extent. This creates a very easy and forgiving mental map because it is a simple shape, the full width (more or less) of the display or device, with a familiar pattern.
In contrast, 4 of these designs have different numbers of numbers on each row, some with several different widths. You'd have to remember, was it three numbers in the first row, or two? How many in the second? Was that one with an extra button on the side?
So to start these designs don't seem to consider why the original design is successful.
Next they don't seem to include the context of the thumb thing. We often hold our phone in one hand because precision is not required for most apps, for example Instagram where all functionality is within that bottom easy zone. But other apps require precision, many games for instance, and it's likely people change their grip frequently for those contexts. Is there data on that specifically? Anecdotally I seem to remember most people I know holding with one hand and dialing with the other. So the reach of the thumb isn't as big a consideration as the designers might think.
And as others have pointed out it won't save much time, since hardly anyone uses the dialpad except the occasional adding of a contact or dialing of a conference line.
I don't mean to rag on this (rereading, I sounded more critical than I am), I think it's fun to try to redesign stuff. But it reminds me of when people try to remake the ordinary wall outlet. They start modifying it without really considering how deceptively well designed it is.
Every single one of these alternative layouts is a load of hot garbage. The reason the current layout is good is because it's good enough and familiar. If you have a problem with thumb reach then make the pad smaller, move it closer to the thumb, or make it easier for people to input the number through other methods than keypad.
We can recognize QR codes, heck, even do AR on a phone. Surely identifying phone numbers via the camera and inputting them that way would be easy and a measurable improvement over the current method of mashing buttons.
Since dialing a number by hand is such an infrequent operation, inventing some wonkball new standard for it is a super bad plan. There's a lot of other things you could innovate on and come up with real improvements, like how you might make a better audio playback control system, or re-visiting mixing tools (equalizer, cross-fader, effects filters) for music to make them easier to understand on an intuitive level.
> Surely identifying phone numbers via the camera and inputting them that way would be easy and a measurable improvement over the current method of mashing buttons.
Not many people really dial phone numbers these days though - dialing via contacts, history, a link on a website or Google Maps are far more common in my experience.
The issue is already pretty much solved without the need for any OCR - of course Google Goggles does do that too if you need it.
Not really. What if there's an emergency and someone's trying to dial a number but, due to mitigating circumstances, are having trouble using your crazypants dial pad?
What if, worse, they're only familar with your pad and are confronted with an actual phone that uses a totally different system?
What if this isn't a dial pad, but an interface for a car or heavy equipment? What if, in a moment of panic, someone's muscle memory kicks in and they do what they've always done to avoid disaster, only in your system it does the opposite?
Switching from rotary dial to a dial pad was a big deal, and whatever system they chose for the dial pad out of all those kooky options would be the standard. If they had them in random order for whatever reason, then leave it alone.
I see this all the time when people think they're "helping" by showing a keyboard in alphabetical order. No, not helping.
It used to be that every single country would have one or more power plug types. Over the years some have faded out, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes stubbornly, but having fewer standards is almost always better.
The long-tail of UX is misunderstood indeed. Just because you can redesign something doesn't mean you should.
>What if there's an emergency and someone's trying to dial a number but, due to mitigating circumstances, are having trouble using your crazypants dial pad?
What if they're handicapped, and only have one finger and the new layout allows them to dial faster? The current design would have failed them. Every design works within the constraints that are given. Creating cases where a particular design works/doesn't work isn't hard or interesting, unless you actually do something about it (which is what this article is proposing).
>The long-tail of UX is misunderstood indeed.
Then I would invite you to study it some more.
>Just because you can redesign something doesn't mean you should.
No reading of what I said, or the linked article has anything even remotely close to suggesting that. Maybe you could have asked for clarification since your reply seems very confused to me.
I am very much a UX enthusiast if not long-time student of that field. I am a constant proponent for usability features.
These patently awful dial pads help nobody but the authors of the blog post fishing for clicks. They're junk. They're worse than useless.
Apple made a "one handed keyboard" for iOS 11 (http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/09/21/inside-ios-11-appl...) and it shows how it can be done. They scrunched it down a bit to make it more convenient to use. They did not arbitrarily rearrange everything into an unfamiliar layout and force that layout on everyone who wanted to use that feature.
Another example is the Matias "half" keyboard (http://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/) which comes in two varieties: Minimal and full-sized. Both offer similar features and are intended to be used with one hand. Note they didn't jumble up the keys, either, they made it as conventional and familiar as possible while still achieving usability goals.
Design that can't stand up to honest scrutiny isn't good design IMO. If you feel this isn't honest scrutiny, then that is a separate issue than saying one shouldn't work on established UX paradigms.
I'll agree with you on the precision issue, as these designs would seem to need greater precision to hit the correct button, even if only by a few degrees.
However, the consistency of rows I think only makes sense with physical buttons where you can feel your way across them. With a flat panel, we don't really have the feedback anyway, so you can't touch your way down to the next row and know where you are.
Having said all that, I'm not a fan of these designs, but I am a fan of the designer taking on the challenge.
sure. its like saying the qwerty keyboard is well chunked and can't be improved on... the point is to improve ergonomics and can be improved depending on how the user holds the phone.
We get stuck with common ways of doing things, sometimes for good reasons, or sometimes for no-good reasons. An occasional re-think is useful, even if its just a mental exercise. As you mention there is a lot of inertia with this one, but they're not plotting to take your favorite dial-pad layout away from you anytime soon :)
One of the concept mockups says patent pending. If the author is attempting to patent this I can see why he wants to re-open the established standard, but there isn't much value in changing how the buttons are arranged. And frankly, if he's trying to patent this button layout, it doesn't matter if it's any better because it will never be used due to the patent.
The future is more likely dialing by voice than it is a re-arranged button layout.
I agree re: the patent pending and their trying to drum up some sort of support.
My opinion, what a monumental waste of time. I'm damn happy that I read tbgvi's comment before looking at the article, as the few minutes I spent browsing over it seem a waste.
What's next, let's design coat buttons to allow people to get dressed 0.5 seconds faster(after of course speeding hours relearning their muscle memory to actually do it -and don't forget the patented new button design giving them 20% of all sales of course)
Dialing by voice? Surely the future is not dialing at all?
I can't remember the last time I used a phone number for anything. Contacting friends is mostly done via social media. Talking on the phone is done via voice or video via same social media. Contacting companies? Via e-mail or their own webpage with some kind of chat support.
I only have a phone number, so that people without smart phones (my grandmother) can contact me.
> I can't remember the last time I used a phone number for anything.
Daily.
> Contacting friends is mostly done via social media. Talking on the phone is done via voice or video via same social media.
My friends aren't reliably on social media (and some of them aren't at all). SMS is quickest for small things, an actual phone call is quickest for a slightly longer discussion. E-mail for a group discussion or long-term planning.
> Contacting companies? Via e-mail or their own webpage with some kind of chat support.
I start with their online help or ordering system. For a tech company, e-mail might be the next option. For food, or something where I'm contacting someone local, it's almost always a phone call.
I'd have to think about the last time I actually dialed a number by hand, though.
Other than my work (which happens to be related to telephony apps) I rarely use the dialpad.
If I meet a new person I enter 10 digits and that is the extent of my usage. Not to say that the design in use is justified by limited use, but my point is that dialing a number is already antiquated. Most of the time I dial something from a saved/shared contact, maps, or from a link in an email or on a website - never actually typing in a number.
Though I echo the sentiment about most phone number input is not done by using the dial pad, there is still need to have a dial pad -- especially to interact with IVR systems.
The telephone dial pad is as familiar as the QWERTY keyboard, and attempting to change that -- especially for something that people use less than ever -- seems futile to me. That said, the underlying point of increasing screen sizes leading to hard-to-reach dial pads is valid.
What I'm missing though is that to me there's a painfully obvious solution: make the existing dial pad smaller. Nothing says it has to take up the entire physical screen space. Take the existing, familiar layout, and resize and reposition it to be within the "natural thumb arc" area. This does mean different size screens need different layouts, but that seems like a trivial detail.
Yeah, a simple solution on iPhone is to just get rid of the full height "dial" circle icon and make it a flat button, and shift the whole view down towards the bottom of the screen.
To speak of dial pad redesign (with hints of patent pending) in the age of smartphones is necessarily as debilitating as any fixed layout from yesteryear. At least older devices had the excuse of being constrained by technology of the day, mechanically fixed, and/or limited in compute.
A few user-selectable preset configurations + strictly user-defined option is the only sensible direction. That this wasn't implemented 10 years ago suggests a bit about its pragmatic value.
I believe the problem is more general: touchscreen interfaces would benefit greatly from a wild redesign study. Why does the Android menu pull down from the top? Why does Firefox mobile lay tabs at the top of the screen? Why do apps and websites put menu icons at the top? When I had a <4" screen it worked fine, but on a larger phone I reposition my hand every time I reach above the top 3/4. That's for every unfortunately located app, every X box, every page reload, every notification, every search query, and so on.
Cool idea but I'm kinda baffled by the new designs. The writer presents the thumb reach diagrams, but then the none of the new designs seem to conform to the very clear curve of those diagrams?
Honestly I almost never use the dial pad anymore. Nearly all of my communications on my phone are asynchronous: email, text, etc...
I receive more calls than I make, and when I do place a call I almost always do so through my address book or favorites. So while I think this is a great experiment I'm not sure its actually that useful.
Why not simply shrink the dial pad back down to iPhone 4 size and put it in the thumb zone? Is there a reason it needs to take up the whole screen? Sure it will look a bit weird, but the ergonomics would be a win.
I would probably still center it though, since we don't know which hand is holding the phone.
I hadn't dialed a phone number in ages (months at least) until I started developing a phone based website change recently. I just don't call people who I don't know. I tap faces 99% of the time. I suspect many mobile phone users are the same.
Why are age, gender, and (particularly) ethnicity deemed relevant fields used for tagging the data (but not things like handedness or hand related metrics)?
I feel like the "how people hold the phone" study is sort of flawed - people probably hold it in each of these positions at different times.
One-handed: clicking audio controls, scrolling through news or similar content
One hand holding, one hand tapping: more precise input of things like phone numbers, browsing web pages, etc.
Two hands holding: typing long messages, some games.
Maybe it's because I have a larger phone (5.5"), but I wouldn't do any input task more than a single button press or scroll using my thumb. I always bust out the other hand for that.
I have no objection to these giant shoe size phones being available, just that my only choice of phone now is an SE (and frankly I'd go back to iphone 4 size if anyone brought out a top end small phone). I'd buy a maxed out nano version of an X in a heartbeat at pretty much any price.
But what I'm really talking about is not myself but the thumb diagram in the article. It seems extraordinary to design a consumer product that is known to be uncomfortable. It's almost like the South Park It bike was released. I get that there was optimisation for eyes at the expense of hands (and portability, in a mobile device!) but the point of design is to balance constraints - it's a definition of bad design throw half of them out of the window.
you have to think about the non-alphabetical users who "type" by drawing characters/pictures. for them, the bigger the better. phones like the note 8 weren't designed for a western audience.
I'm not aware of any major language where even a significant minority of users input text by drawing characters. Most East Asian users type in some kind of romanization and then use predictive text to pick characters. In general, only elderly users tend to prefer drawing inputs.
concept-1 that is patent pending needs to use the bottom right space for the backspace button. many times i find myself stretching or having to regrip the phone to hit the stupid backspace because I made an error. no one patent my improvement on the inventor's patent pls. kthnxbai =)
I find testing new user experiences for something as established as a dial pad to be interesting. This post mostly talks about changing the design for the dial pad to put more buttons within thumb reach, without going into many of the additional challenges.
For example, as others commented, many users primarily 'dial' their smartphone nowadays by tapping on somebody's face or going through their contact information. The cost of changing the experience may not be worth the added benefit. Along those same lines, it may well be that most dial pad users are not the owner of the phone, but somebody who borrows it to make a call or enter their own info. In that case, the experience should be familiar to them, regardless of whether the user has grown accustomed to a new dial pad. These are the kinds of factors I'd like to see discussed in researching a new dial pad experience.
Resistance to change on something like this is real. In developing a web-based phone app, people who were using computers, with keyboards, would still prefer to click on the buttons in the style of a traditional dial pad. To me, investigating those challenges are much more interesting than "Here are some designs; let's see which you say you like."
Whenever I am going to call someone, I use the dial pad but I start to type their name instead of their phone number. I feel like that is also pretty common so I wouldn't say this is something where the costs would outweigh the benefits.
Good point, even if I don't have them in my contact book with a name I still likely have called them previously, so I used the recent caller list and scroll + click on the number I recognize.
I wouldn't say dialing a new number is a common use case for me. But that doesn't mean people don't do it often enough to warrant research.
These generic "solved" UX issues are still things that millions of people do each day, given a billion phones, so it's well worth a modern UX study IMO.
159 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadThe dial-pad may be too difficult to reach on our big screens now, but the momentum required to change it will never exist because it simply doesn't get enough use to be a pain point anymore.
Excellent write up and use of graphics though. The Bell labs part was really interesting.
Replacing the dial pad with the numpad keyboard would solve the problem and not require custom layout. It would also be more consistent across applications that do calls instead of having a special dial pad for the phone app.
I'd take a couple of thoughts.
Most of my dailing is done via voice, phone URL or stored contact.
Most of my time in dialpad is spent entering digits for automated systems (e.g. "press 1 to join meeting" or "dial meeting code then #" or "press 0 to talk to a receptionist").
What dedicated call vs. hangup buttons?
For example, speaking to your cell phone company, you could see:
This would be customized to whatever phone tree you're interfacing with.And heck, let's get rid of phone queues while we're at it - just have the agent trigger a callback rather than making them listen to an awful hold music loop for potentially upwards of 15 minutes.
http://scotthurff.com/posts/how-to-design-for-thumbs-in-the-...
though even there I cannot find any explanation for "ow-space".
Maybe a reference to some game?
Also I find that doing standard dialing is pretty rare these days, and so low mental load, that I think I wasted more brain cycles reading this than I have ever just dialing a number.
I'd be soooo happy though if phones and keyboard numpads had the same layout (rather than being inverted horizontally. No preference for either, just want them to be the same.)
Alas.
Part of the reason the current layout works is because it is well chunked. You have 123 on top, 456 in the middle, and 789 on the bottom. 0 and functional keys, which often serve their own purpose, get their own row. Four sets of three, nicely like the way our minds like to remember numerals and sets of numerals. Shape-wise, 1-9 are in a square, in numerical order from left to right just like a paragraph, then the others continue the pattern to a lesser extent. This creates a very easy and forgiving mental map because it is a simple shape, the full width (more or less) of the display or device, with a familiar pattern.
In contrast, 4 of these designs have different numbers of numbers on each row, some with several different widths. You'd have to remember, was it three numbers in the first row, or two? How many in the second? Was that one with an extra button on the side?
So to start these designs don't seem to consider why the original design is successful.
Next they don't seem to include the context of the thumb thing. We often hold our phone in one hand because precision is not required for most apps, for example Instagram where all functionality is within that bottom easy zone. But other apps require precision, many games for instance, and it's likely people change their grip frequently for those contexts. Is there data on that specifically? Anecdotally I seem to remember most people I know holding with one hand and dialing with the other. So the reach of the thumb isn't as big a consideration as the designers might think.
And as others have pointed out it won't save much time, since hardly anyone uses the dialpad except the occasional adding of a contact or dialing of a conference line.
I don't mean to rag on this (rereading, I sounded more critical than I am), I think it's fun to try to redesign stuff. But it reminds me of when people try to remake the ordinary wall outlet. They start modifying it without really considering how deceptively well designed it is.
We can recognize QR codes, heck, even do AR on a phone. Surely identifying phone numbers via the camera and inputting them that way would be easy and a measurable improvement over the current method of mashing buttons.
Since dialing a number by hand is such an infrequent operation, inventing some wonkball new standard for it is a super bad plan. There's a lot of other things you could innovate on and come up with real improvements, like how you might make a better audio playback control system, or re-visiting mixing tools (equalizer, cross-fader, effects filters) for music to make them easier to understand on an intuitive level.
The dial pad is fine. Leave it alone.
Not many people really dial phone numbers these days though - dialing via contacts, history, a link on a website or Google Maps are far more common in my experience.
The issue is already pretty much solved without the need for any OCR - of course Google Goggles does do that too if you need it.
i did
https://github.com/ransomw/simp-phone/blob/master/client/app...
... and it still turned out to be a convoluted story of code design.
perhaps the results will be useful to anyone considering pursing the UI design end of things.
What if, worse, they're only familar with your pad and are confronted with an actual phone that uses a totally different system?
What if this isn't a dial pad, but an interface for a car or heavy equipment? What if, in a moment of panic, someone's muscle memory kicks in and they do what they've always done to avoid disaster, only in your system it does the opposite?
Switching from rotary dial to a dial pad was a big deal, and whatever system they chose for the dial pad out of all those kooky options would be the standard. If they had them in random order for whatever reason, then leave it alone.
I see this all the time when people think they're "helping" by showing a keyboard in alphabetical order. No, not helping.
It used to be that every single country would have one or more power plug types. Over the years some have faded out, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes stubbornly, but having fewer standards is almost always better.
The long-tail of UX is misunderstood indeed. Just because you can redesign something doesn't mean you should.
What if they're handicapped, and only have one finger and the new layout allows them to dial faster? The current design would have failed them. Every design works within the constraints that are given. Creating cases where a particular design works/doesn't work isn't hard or interesting, unless you actually do something about it (which is what this article is proposing).
>The long-tail of UX is misunderstood indeed.
Then I would invite you to study it some more.
>Just because you can redesign something doesn't mean you should.
No reading of what I said, or the linked article has anything even remotely close to suggesting that. Maybe you could have asked for clarification since your reply seems very confused to me.
I am very much a UX enthusiast if not long-time student of that field. I am a constant proponent for usability features.
These patently awful dial pads help nobody but the authors of the blog post fishing for clicks. They're junk. They're worse than useless.
Apple made a "one handed keyboard" for iOS 11 (http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/09/21/inside-ios-11-appl...) and it shows how it can be done. They scrunched it down a bit to make it more convenient to use. They did not arbitrarily rearrange everything into an unfamiliar layout and force that layout on everyone who wanted to use that feature.
Another example is the Matias "half" keyboard (http://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/) which comes in two varieties: Minimal and full-sized. Both offer similar features and are intended to be used with one hand. Note they didn't jumble up the keys, either, they made it as conventional and familiar as possible while still achieving usability goals.
However, the consistency of rows I think only makes sense with physical buttons where you can feel your way across them. With a flat panel, we don't really have the feedback anyway, so you can't touch your way down to the next row and know where you are.
Having said all that, I'm not a fan of these designs, but I am a fan of the designer taking on the challenge.
The future is more likely dialing by voice than it is a re-arranged button layout.
My opinion, what a monumental waste of time. I'm damn happy that I read tbgvi's comment before looking at the article, as the few minutes I spent browsing over it seem a waste.
What's next, let's design coat buttons to allow people to get dressed 0.5 seconds faster(after of course speeding hours relearning their muscle memory to actually do it -and don't forget the patented new button design giving them 20% of all sales of course)
I can't remember the last time I used a phone number for anything. Contacting friends is mostly done via social media. Talking on the phone is done via voice or video via same social media. Contacting companies? Via e-mail or their own webpage with some kind of chat support.
I only have a phone number, so that people without smart phones (my grandmother) can contact me.
And 2FA!
Daily.
> Contacting friends is mostly done via social media. Talking on the phone is done via voice or video via same social media.
My friends aren't reliably on social media (and some of them aren't at all). SMS is quickest for small things, an actual phone call is quickest for a slightly longer discussion. E-mail for a group discussion or long-term planning.
> Contacting companies? Via e-mail or their own webpage with some kind of chat support.
I start with their online help or ordering system. For a tech company, e-mail might be the next option. For food, or something where I'm contacting someone local, it's almost always a phone call.
I'd have to think about the last time I actually dialed a number by hand, though.
If I meet a new person I enter 10 digits and that is the extent of my usage. Not to say that the design in use is justified by limited use, but my point is that dialing a number is already antiquated. Most of the time I dial something from a saved/shared contact, maps, or from a link in an email or on a website - never actually typing in a number.
The telephone dial pad is as familiar as the QWERTY keyboard, and attempting to change that -- especially for something that people use less than ever -- seems futile to me. That said, the underlying point of increasing screen sizes leading to hard-to-reach dial pads is valid.
What I'm missing though is that to me there's a painfully obvious solution: make the existing dial pad smaller. Nothing says it has to take up the entire physical screen space. Take the existing, familiar layout, and resize and reposition it to be within the "natural thumb arc" area. This does mean different size screens need different layouts, but that seems like a trivial detail.
A few user-selectable preset configurations + strictly user-defined option is the only sensible direction. That this wasn't implemented 10 years ago suggests a bit about its pragmatic value.
I receive more calls than I make, and when I do place a call I almost always do so through my address book or favorites. So while I think this is a great experiment I'm not sure its actually that useful.
I would probably still center it though, since we don't know which hand is holding the phone.
One-handed: clicking audio controls, scrolling through news or similar content
One hand holding, one hand tapping: more precise input of things like phone numbers, browsing web pages, etc.
Two hands holding: typing long messages, some games.
Maybe it's because I have a larger phone (5.5"), but I wouldn't do any input task more than a single button press or scroll using my thumb. I always bust out the other hand for that.
But what I'm really talking about is not myself but the thumb diagram in the article. It seems extraordinary to design a consumer product that is known to be uncomfortable. It's almost like the South Park It bike was released. I get that there was optimisation for eyes at the expense of hands (and portability, in a mobile device!) but the point of design is to balance constraints - it's a definition of bad design throw half of them out of the window.
For example, as others commented, many users primarily 'dial' their smartphone nowadays by tapping on somebody's face or going through their contact information. The cost of changing the experience may not be worth the added benefit. Along those same lines, it may well be that most dial pad users are not the owner of the phone, but somebody who borrows it to make a call or enter their own info. In that case, the experience should be familiar to them, regardless of whether the user has grown accustomed to a new dial pad. These are the kinds of factors I'd like to see discussed in researching a new dial pad experience.
Resistance to change on something like this is real. In developing a web-based phone app, people who were using computers, with keyboards, would still prefer to click on the buttons in the style of a traditional dial pad. To me, investigating those challenges are much more interesting than "Here are some designs; let's see which you say you like."
I wouldn't say dialing a new number is a common use case for me. But that doesn't mean people don't do it often enough to warrant research.
These generic "solved" UX issues are still things that millions of people do each day, given a billion phones, so it's well worth a modern UX study IMO.