Graham Pullin and Crispin Jones, Ideo

Crispin Jones and Graham Pullin feel your anger. They, too, have had their peace disturbed by loud and aggressive mobile phone users. So they're fighting back.

In association with London-based industrial design firm Ideo, Jones and Pullin have launched the Social Mobile (or SoMo) phone — handset prototypes that send disruptive noises, anonymous warnings and even electric shocks to punish breaches of wireless etiquette. “The basics of using mobile phones are no longer being considered,” said Pullin, an Ideo engineer (left). “These kinds of social issues need to be examined. There is serious intent behind our irony.”

There are five Social Mobiles. SoMo1 sends a mild electric shock to callers speaking too loud, escalating to a more unpleasant jolt if the yapper doesn't pipe down. Instead of speaking into the phone, users of SoMo2 manipulate a joystick and keys to control a speech synthesizer that generates a series of “yes” and “no” sounds. “There are 20 different ways of saying ‘no,’ each with a different meaning,” said Jones, a freelance research associate. “The same problem can be fixed by text messaging, but when it comes to emotional nuance, forget it.”

The clarinet-shaped SoMo3 preys on insecurities by requiring users to turn Benny Goodman and essentially “play” the melody of the number they're dialing by holding down combinations of keys and blowing on the phone's reed. SoMo4 eliminates conventional ringtones altogether: “The user knocks on the back of the phone as if it were a door — then the person on the other end decides how urgent the knocking is and whether the call should be answered,” Jones said. “The point is that even after 1000 years of technology, an alert mechanism is still more impoverished than a block of wood.” And SoMo5 allows users to anonymously interrupt wireless conversations by electronically “catapulting” sounds and phrases ranging from the vulgar to the abstract.

Ideo has no plans to sell the phones commercially. “Our ambition was to provoke discussion,” Jones said. “That seems to be happening.”