okay welcome to the 2nd meeting of this design group i will briefly go through the notes of the of the last meeting just done in in note form and i have not attributed anything to individuals because we are working strictly as a team here and n nobody is working equally so sorry we we s we saw that the the problems with existing remote controls were the b a boring shape and boring color and and we s we saw that the what we needed to do was to to make sure the device controls several items that switching was easy that you should not need to point the thing at anything in particular that it need to be contoured to make it interesting that the keys might be concave simply because that has not been done before that we know of should have interchangeable fascias so people can personalize it illuminated so that people can see it in dark rooms and that people might want it as as in addition to their existing remote controls and that it sh it should just always work whenever you use it and that it should not be too small that it it gets lost now i will shortly ask for for 33 presentations before i do that however i will go through some new project requirements that the the management have placed on us and will be challenging in terms of what we discussed at the 1st meeting the the ma the management has had it is own thoughts on this and the they do not necessarily agree with with what we we thought and and then we will as a result of that we will then talk through the the functions that we see the the device actually b carrying out and we have 40 minutes to do this in and i anyway okay now the n the new requirements are the the management team see that teletext is no longer of any importance given the the rise of the internet and and they want it only to cover televisions now what is not q quite clear from their directive is whether they mean th they do not want it to cover teletext or whether they do not want it to cover you know videos d v d s satellite boxes which i mean we saw as being fundamental to the to the exercise the the actual wording of the directive is that it should cover television only and on that basis i i think we we need to bear that in mind but possibly keep at the backs of our minds that the reality that people even when they no longer they do not look at teletext anymore they certainly do look at other things the device has to incorporate the company logo and colors the the logo being at b the bottom of the screen there the the the 2 r s in gray against a yellow background now this does not necessarily mean that we have to give up some of our ideas about making it attractive to the t to the market but do do introduce some some constraints as to how we might do that it also has to be simple which to some extent goes along w with the 1st one and that we have already said that it must be simple cause that is what people want anyway but they also want it to be simple to get it to the market quickly which is is is their choice but we we need to talk that through okay so after the meeting it will be summarized and notes sent out and etcetera okay so we will 1st of all have individual reports from everybody again i there is no order of precedence here so i i i will leave it up to you to who who who thinks they would like to go go 1st i do not mind p fine can i steal the cable 0 sorry you can indeed cheers i got a how do i start there 0 if you click on the the one that that looks like a projection screen no the one to the right of that that one that one cool well these are functionality requirements from the our our guys down in the the research lab took 100 people and covered all the aspects of what is needed by people and what they want to see everything kinda from functionality and how individual functions are how mu how how often they are used and how much their necessary and stuff and general opinions about current current remotes see that as we kinda noticed 75% of people find their remote controls ugly so some kind of a new style should be incorporated that is less ugly along with looking less ugly if it looks better 80% of people said they would spend more money on it which is a a plus for us if we can make it look better it would be more cost effective and we can put the price up current remote controls do not match the operating behavior of the user i can empl i kinda take that to mean as they they do not they yeah they only use they only work for the television or yeah like as in in my flat i have got 6 remote controls for a stereo system a digital box a d v d player a video player and t v if it was i mean th my behavior is to use multiple things at the same time and multiple remotes are not really matched well to my behavior again 75% is 75% of users say they zap a lot i took to mean that they just they use it a lot they use it regularly rather than standing up and manually change channels or volume and yeah i think the big issue is 50% users only use 10% of the buttons cause wh if we got a remote that like well we will have some buttons taken off by the lack of teletext but 0 and we are going to see on the that some of the functions like audio settings are not h hardly ever used and used very are not considered relevant by the user so i think maybe fewer buttons which also make the design look sleeker i dunno yeah and frustrations of like people losing remote control i dunno maybe some kind of system of you press a button on the t v or maybe that is b it would have to incorporate but like some kind of system where you can f use something else to find the remote control maybe like it will beep or something and yep the time taken to learn new remote controls is do not want to make it too complicated easy to use for new like 1st time users and stuff and repetitive strain injury i suppose we should make it more comfortable and make ma possibly even use have to make it yeah fewer buttons like i was saying about the whole mice the mouse idea of it feels more comfortable maybe do not even have to hold it as such gosh must be some telly addicts out there if they get r s i from their television remote is all i can say but yeah it also asked if we would if people would pay more for speech recognition and younger people say they would and there was another section on our on the report for l c d displays but the data was not there so i do not actually know what the results for that were so right may be incrementally emitting but yeah yeah i must say that the i c can not remember what f you know phone service i was using the other day but that had sorta speech recognition which worked remarkably well so that is indeed a and it would cut out the r s i as well if you a thought and it it cuts out i was was going to say you can not get a lot of r s i j just get jaw ache okay sorry yeah 0 yeah so possibly the speech recognition is possibly something could add into the design 0 i have got some other things i could not fit onto this presentation you see this okay almost no it is sorry it is a bit i will read out to you functionality like people is opinions on functionality the relevance to the remote and how often they are used so like the power using the using the d swi the power switch to switch on t v is a high relevance of 9 but it is not frequently used you see what i mean whereas channel selection which is very high relevance is used the most yeah so m we can maybe even start to cut down on or i was possibly even thinking of a design that maybe some of the buttons are hidden from everyday use maybe like a folding ledge or something so that we can maybe go into the channel settings and the audio settings which are low relevance and rarely used and keep the v volume selection and channel selection very easily it could be 0 i was just going to say maybe like the flip phones that they use i mean have you seen the new mo mobile phones that flip out and they have the like texting and then the numbers on one side yeah 0 yeah so you could have the most used buttons on top and flip it out or something yeah like the one that like slides back and the buttons are concealed underneath yeah should we actually bite the bullet here if people really do not use those buttons to any extent at all remove them altogether just remove them completely that might be the we we could actually have we could actually have a remote control with i wonder whether we could get the remote control with no buttons at all if we went for voice recognition given that the now the the age structure we were looking at i mean w we had usage by age structure what we did not have was what proportion of people using remotes were in those particular age groups now do we know whether they yeah 40 no sorry for 45 to 55 age group to put myself right in the middle of it u use remote controls to a great extent yes we no this is for pay more for speech recognition that would have speech recogn right so we are looking at well again we do not know the relative proportion the relative numbers in the age groups yeah that is true if we wanted something different truly different then the buttonless remote control w would be it p well the only problem i can think of with that is if you have got a lot of people that do not want to be bothered learning how to use new rem remote controls if you just kind of take away everything that they are used to knowing that is going to be quite a change but if you just lift it up and say channel one or b b c it might or even i mean you could even just have it left on you could just put it down once on top your t v and never have to maybe i yeah have a big kind of like the satellite box or the cable box and have it just go on the t v and then it does not matter where in the room you are you will not lose it yeah it c well it i can i can see technical problems with that in terms of the you know no the sound from the television because if somebody actually on the television says you know b b c one yeah 0 i t v and you are watching b b c then then it might change itself so it probably needs to be possibly actually need a button on it yeah yeah that is true just to activate it 0 yeah or or something just to identify that you have lifted it up and it is use and and then just say 0 i do not know a thought and and then i mean that that would certainly be truly different yeah cause you know audio settings nought 8% i mean if they were not there would people miss them but look at the importance of them the volume settings relevance of 2 out of 10 yeah vol volume yes th w we need to s identify things that people actually need and and it is a function of frequency and relevance yeah they are not used often but they are quite important when they are used yeah and i would say ignoring ig ignoring power for the moment the channel and volume and th w w given given that we have been told to ignore teletext yeah channel and volume are the only ones that would appear to be essential stand out so we if we can design something that that looks interesting know or looks different incorporates the the logo and and the colors and we can still have our interchangeable fascias even if it is the yellow and gray and i dunno buttons or or buttons as an option i just had a thought actually sorry to interrupt do please you were saying about it could technical problems of like someone on the television saying a channel number and it changed we could maybe have like an activation word cause i have seen i have seen this used on computers before where you just you address the remote you address the computer and then give it a command you cer certainly could depe i depends whether if we want to make this so simple that anybody can walk into the room and lift it up and say 0 i see 0 yeah i see b b c one okay i mean you could print actually print it on the yeah device itself i mean i am just thinking of the point of view of peop you could still like lose this remote s th this i th that is always going to be a problem i think and i i i s so i suppose one could make it so desirable that if people lose it they immediately go out and buy another one anyway sorry carry on do you want to just carry on with 0 no i i interrupted you sorry or no no no b i was in the middle of in the middle of your report there 0 okay well i was just kinda wrapping up there yeah i was thinking yeah maybe such things are relevant okay we could make things much more f i think the the 80% of people would spend more on a remote that looks better combined with decrease the or take out the limited functio functions that we do not really use much alright take out teletext but as for channel settings and stuff it might it might turn people somewhe peop some people that want the whole functionality away but since if we are marketing a more kind of fashionable approach then it would it would be fashion and fashion over practicality s s we could we could make it dual function voice recognition and still have buttons on it cause we are 0 we could yeah we c yeah we could even have it as like a yeah the buttons control this and the voice functions control the f things that you would do all the time so certainly could so yeah if we could power on and channel selection and and volume selection would not have to really yeah yeah the i mean the the advantage of doing away the buttons altogether is it makes the thing cheaper yeah and probably it would look better as well no it cou certainly opens up the possibility for making it you know visually very distinctive yeah cause you know it does not have to be a oblong box yeah lined with numbered buttons and yeah okay who sorry have you have you finished there andy yeah yeah that is everything yep yep given that we have already had a extensive discussion okay well i can do mine do you want the cable yeah let us see if i can make this work 0 you have to hit like function and f something 0 f 8 f 8 is it doing dunno give it about 20 seconds or so okay ah there we go 0 yeah it is going 0 okay okay so this is just about the technical functions alright so the method i looked online for examples of other similar products and then just kind of was trying to brainstorm some possible design ideas and identify what the necessary things are what people are what you really want to have a remote control do and then there are 2 different kinds that i found there is a user centered one and an engineering centered one which i will have pictures of and then we kinda have to decide which one this should be so these are the 2 different ones this one this is the user centered it has quite a few fewer buttons and then this is the engineering centered which has a lot more buttons and probably this is one that people complain about about having too many buttons that you do not use so basically what a remote control is is you it is to send messages to the television set you know turn on off switch the channels and the volume and things such as that and so for this product it is going to be television only and then it has to have the logos for the company and the colors and so for my personal preferences i think this one is easier to use and has quite a you know fewer buttons we want something that sends messages easily to the television and i was kind of wondering about this example that they have it looks kind of narrow at the top and i was thinking maybe if it were wider at the top then that would be easier yeah and so we have to decide what is going to make our product different e the unique style maybe have it light up so it is visible in the dark the changeable face plates and the lighting up and visible i was when we were talking about havi losing it maybe to have a button on the television that you press and it maybe if it makes a noise or lights up or something like that so it is easier to find if someone has hidden under the couch or something like that so that is my presentation yeah okay can i i am actually going to use the it is going to cause great technical problems over here i am actually going to use the f they probably clip to you 0 yeah they might be movable yeah 0 yeah they are all they are not connected to anything on the table you just leave em on and walk around with em yes rather than the the the traditional in fact i will not even go that far something like this shape you know sort of something that you can that is sort of a more vertical shape that you you sort of hold in your hand well i am trying to think l l such as i mean something you hold up like that possibly with a couple of buttons like that but with the the entire top with the you know the the infrared or whatever source so that you know it is flying off in all directions so that again the n need to look at the the the technicalities of actually achieving that in terms of whether the you know the power requirements of the such a source you know compromise the our our need for you know it it being permanently you know available whether whether different technology i mean th all all these remotes are presumably infrared and like they have been for a long time we we possibly need to be looking at at at something different you know short range not like the old radio remote controls where you would change next door is telly when you change yours but i think basically i if we are going for i if minimum number of buttons is our priority then we should as i say r know really bite the bullets and and reduce the buttons to absolute minimum you know possibly with backup channel and volume buttons and on off and nothing else so that it can al it could almost end up like that but again except that you know the risk of losing it anyway okay so kate wh what are your your thoughts on this yes 0 which one does this plug into i think it is all there that one h i can not did you could you see it on you screen when it 0 yeah that is kind of strange that is not cool 0 well anyways alright yeah so i will just do my presentation on the working design 0 there we go okay just at the m yeah the whole sort of method of how the remote control works the basic function of the remote control is to send messages to another sh system the the t v or the d v d player or whatever and it does this by well you need to start off you need an energy source and this energy source will feed into an integrated circuit chip and the circuit chip is the part that actually composes the different messages within the remote which will then be sent to the the television the d v d to tell that what to do and you need a user interface which controls the chip and thus the messages and the user interface is that is basically just you kn the s sorta design of the actual remote which you hold in your hands and what buttons will be on it 0 shoot okay just general findings what we need technically speaking for the remote control is some sort of energy source some sort of user interface which i think we have mostly been talking about the user interface and the design of that a circuit chip within that to control and send the messages and a sender and receiver and oops huh this is just sort of a little schematic diagram of what we are looking for this just kinda represents the energy source which feeds into the circuit chip which maybe then we could have that feed into a switch which would send signals f to a subcomponent and on to a light bulb between so it will light up once we start once you start pressing buttons also send signals to the infrared bulb which will be the part that actually what sends signals to the the television and then you have got your happy little t v watcher there and so my personal preferences i i just think we need sorta big energy source that will not die out perhaps some sort of rechargeable battery or a battery dock you could place it in so it would constantly be charged so you would not have to be worrying about it running out of batteries and not changing channels for you a wide range sender receiver so that you can hit the buttons from basically anywhere in the room and the channel will still be changed also definitely a user friendly interface and i think we have all sort of mentioned adding a a locating device on it so when it does get stuck under the couch cushions as they inevitably do you can find them easily and that is pretty much it okay it seems seems to me there are a number of fundamental decisions to make before we i think your point about the the big energy source is a very valid one i do not suppose we have got any statistics on the the life expectancy of remote controls particularly sort of independent ones given you know the number of things you buy these days which you know have a a a lithium whatever battery in that is you know never needs replacing perhaps we should have the the disposable remote control you know one some sort of typical usage you know the the the battery will last know 510 years by which time i mean when all is said and done the digital television will be taking over in that time scale p perhaps we should know reduce the you know the sort of moving parts even more by not even having a battery compartment and just having one that is guaranteed to last 5 to 10 years yeah and if if anybody manages to run it down we will we will give em a new one 0 cool yeah fair enough it is you know it is what it saves in cost and you know there there is a well it is actually a marketing gimmick i mean it is hardly a gimmick it is it is totally practical so i th think you know the idea of a rechargeable one is unless you are really high tech and it sort of just recharges itself if it is n by you know magnetic waves or whatever if if it it could have like know like a cordless phone in your house it s got like a base that sits there all the time yeah are are people really going to use it though i suppose yeah yeah people are pro i would think that people might forget i mean people forget to put their cordless phones back on there so yeah i i th i think yeah yeah it is i mean i know that somei times my my wife goes out in the morning and says 0 i should have put the phone on to charge and then then she is had those for so long that if she has not worked that out by now cause i only remember to charge my cell phone when battery dies yeah and that is pretty much yeah when it yeah wh when it is died is a problem yeah when it turns itself off that is when i plug it in yeah yeah yeah yeah so what so wh what what do we think about the the the permanent battery yeah think that is a good idea that sounds pretty good yeah no is the you know we we we are really going for the ultimate in ex external simplicity here you know cut cost within the manufacturing and you know if we have a high tech interior then then that that sh may well be cost effective do they make batteries that last that long i mean th th certainly i can not think of anything off the s top of my head but there are certainly things that you buy i mean calculators for example they usually have the little light source i dunno what the heck they are called the but yeah the little cells that yeah they have that little solar som well some do i mean th th but there are battery ones that are you know sort of permanently sealed yeah yeah in in fact i would most of them do not they have sort of a combination of the 2 like when there is light they will work off the light and if there is not yeah they will kick into this battery so we can maybe do something like that whereas there is a battery but if there is enough light then it is using the light so that it is not actually draining the battery all the time but you will have the battery there for when you need it yeah i i mean th th this needs going t into the technology a bit i mean the the actual time that a remote control is actually operating i would think is i is is probably you know no more than minutes in its entire life 0 it depend if it is depends who who is using it who is just sitting there clicking clicking clicking clicking yeah yeah some people are if but i say if if people are getting r s i from it then then then then perhaps we are looking at the wrong market n yeah then they are clicking a lot yeah yeah yeah w like like this this market research thing says number of times per hour that it is used channel selection a 168 per hour times per hour right yeah yeah wow that is a lot yeah 0 i must admit i had not i would i would missed that that does sound excessive but then again if you think it of the amount of you know amount of use it is like yeah that is it is less than a 2nd yeah yeah yeah well that is right and and i i do not i do not even know whether the i do not even know whether the s the signal lasts as long as you actually keep the button pressed or whether it is just a yeah sorta 10th of a 2nd no matter how long you press it for i do not know i do not actually know though i think with digital t v like i know on my cable box you are not supposed to do that because the channel can not keep up with it if you just press it like that yeah so you are supposed to use the menu and go through the different channels that way instead of right so i have got a message to say 5 minutes i dunno how long ago that appeared cause we are we are getting right so i would i need to sum up very quickly here 0 we are looking at extreme simplicity we are looking at a radically different shape possibly no buttons at all but if you can incorporate channel change and volume buttons in into the design then then that is fine in the i mean the the role of the of the the user interface des designer becomes b you know more important here because you know shape is no longer an a a serious constraint but we clearly only need th the main buttons although if clearly only need the main functions i do not see why we should not go for voice recognition and the the only buttons that i think we need are channel control volume control and on off it needs to incorporate the corporate logo the the gray and yellow color scheme and there is no reason why we can not introduce interchangeable covers d so does that accurately summarize what we have discussed yeah yeah yep right so 0 i just have one question yeah so are we doing just the television or are we doing so not d v d players we okay okay we are doing just the television no i think that is quite clear from the the information that we have been given no okay yeah like in the email of television only in fact they are in the constraints email that i got right did not you mention the teletext just television only 0 yeah well th that is one i s that is one i sent you yeah which which was my interpretation of of the what came down from from head office 0 okay yeah 0 yeah 0 okay okay that is that that that that is their their view okay so we can all give some thought to that for for the next meeting thank you very much indeed okay cool
and well 5 and 6 fuller well 5 and it is falling off okay welcome to to the 2nd meeting of this design group briefly go through the notes of the last meeting just done in note form and i have not attributed anything to individuals because we are working strictly as a team here and nobody is working equally so we saw that the problems with existing remote controls were the boring shape and boring color and we saw that what we needed to do was to make sure the device controls several items that switching was easy that you should not need to point the thing at anything in particular that it need to be contoured to make it interesting that the keys might be concave simply because that has not been done before that we know of so that interchangeable fasciers so people can personalize it illuminated so that people can see it in dark rooms that people might want it as in addition to their existing remote controls and that it should always work whenever you use it and that it should not be too small that it gets lost now i will shortly ask for 3 presentations before i do that however i will go through some new project requirements that the management had placed on us and will be challenging in terms of what we discussed at the 1st meeting the management has had its own thoughts on this and they did not necessarily agree with what we thought and then we will as a result of that we will then talk through the functions that we see the device actually going out and we have 40 minutes to do this in now the new requirements are the management team see that teletext is no longer of any importance given the rise of the internet and they wanted only to cover televisions now what is not quite clear from their directive is whether they mean they did not want it to cover televisions wanted to cover teletext or whether they did not want it to cover videos dvds satellite boxers which i mean we saw as being fundamental to the exercise the actual wording of the directive is that it should cover television only on that basis i think we need to bear that in mind but possibly keep at the backs of our minds the reality that people even with it no longer they do not look at teletext anymore they certainly do look at other things the device has to incorporate the company logo and colors the logo being at the bottom of the screen there the 2 r is in gray against a yellow background now this does not necessarily mean that we have to give up some of our ideas about making it attractive to the market but do introduce some constraints as to how we might do that it also has to be simple which to somebody saying it goes along with the 1st one and the way we have already said that it must be simple because that is what people want anyway but they also want it to be simple to get it to the market quickly which is their choice but we need to talk that through okay so after the meeting would be summarized and notes sent out and etc okay so we will 1st of all have individual reports from everybody again there is no order of precedence here so i will leave it up to you to who thinks they would like to go 1st i do not mind no reverse fine can i steal the cable 0 sorry you can indeed cheers how do you how do i start there 0 you click on the one that looks like a projection screen other projection screen other one to the right of that that one cool well these are functional requirements from there are guys down in the research lab 200 people covered all the aspects of what is needed by people and what they want to see everything kind of from functionality and how individual functions are how often they are used and how much the necessary and stuff and general opinions about current remotes i see that as we kind of noticed 75% people find the remote controls ugly so some kind of new style should be incorporated it is less ugly along with looking less ugly it looks better 80% of people said they would spend more money on it which is a plus for us if we can make it look better be a more cost effective if we can put the price up carver control is not match the operating behavior of the user i can i take that to mean as the they do not yeah the only work for the television or elite like or like in my flat i have got 6 remote controls for a stereo system a digital box a dvd player video player tv if it was i mean my behavior is i use multiple things at the same time and multiple modes are not really matched well to my behavior again 75% it is 75% i use the zapp a lot i took to mean that they just they use a lot use it regularly rather than standing up and manually change channels or volume signs and yeah i think a big issue is 50% of use only use 10% of the buttons because we have got remote that like we will have some buttons taken off by the lack of teletext but we go and see that some of the functions like audio settings are not hardly of use and is very are not considered relevant by the user so like maybe fewer buttons which also make design look sleigher yeah and frustrations of like people lose remote control or maybe some kind of system of you press a button on the tv or maybe that is it would have to incorporate it to you but like some kind of system where you can use something else to find the remote control maybe like it will beep or something yeah time taken to learn new remote controls is we do not want to make it too complicated easy to use for like 1st time users and stuff and repetitive strain injury i suppose we should make it more comfortable and make it possibly even use i have to make fewer buttons like as saying about the whole mouse idea of it feel more comfortable of it feels more comfortable maybe do not even have to hold it as such there must be some telly addicts out there if they get rsi from the television but yeah they also asked if we would if people would pay more for speech recognition and younger people would say they would and there was another section on the report for lcd displays but the data was not there so it was a part so to actually know what the results were for that were so maybe it increpents a later meeting but yeah i must say that the i can not remember what you know phone service i was using the other day but that had sort of speech recognition which worked remarkably well so that is indeed a it cuts out of it it would cut out the rsi as well i am just going to say you can not get a lot of rsi just get jawry okay sorry yeah well yeah so possibly the speed recognition is supposed to be something good added to the design although i have got some other things i could not fit onto this presentation see this okay no sorry it is a bit of thing i will read out you functionality like people is opinions on functionality the relevance to the remote and how often they are used so like the power using the switch on tv is a higher relevance of 9 but it is not frequently used you see what i mean whereas channel selection which is very high relevance is used the most so we can maybe even start to cut down on or i was possibly thinking of a design that maybe some of the buttons are hidden from everyday use maybe like a folding lid or something so that we can maybe go into the channel settings and the audio settings which are low relevance and rarely used and keep the volume selection and channel selection very easily it could be 0 i was just going to say maybe like the flip phones that they use have you seen the new mobile phones that flip out and they have the texting and then the numbers on one side so you could have the most used buttons on top and like the ones like slides back in the buttons are concealed under me should we actually bite the bullet here if people really do not use those buttons to any extent at all just remove them completely remove them all together that might be there we could actually have a remote control with i wonder whether we could get the remote control with no buttons at all if we went for voice recognition given that the age structure we were looking at i mean we had usage by age structure what we did not have was what proportion of people using remotes were in those particular age groups do we know whether they 45 to 55 age group to put myself right in the middle of it right in the middle of it use remote controls to a great extent and that is for pain walker speech recognition right so we are looking at well again we do not know the relative proportion the relative numbers in the age groups that is true if we wanted something different truly different then the button must remote well the only problem i can think of with that is if you have got a lot of people that do not want to be bothered learning how to use new remote controls if you just kind of take away everything that they are used to knowing that is going to be quite a change but if you just lift it up and say channel one or even you could even just have it left on you could just put it down once on top your tv and never have to yeah have it be kind of like the satellite box or the cable box and have it just go on the tv and then it does not matter where in the room you are you will not lose it i can see technical problems with that in terms of the sound from the television because if somebody actually on the television says itv watching bbc then it might change itself so it probably needs to be possibly actually need a button on it just to activate it or something just to identify that you have lifted it up on its use and then just say i do not know a thought and then i mean that would certainly be truly different because you know audio settings 08% and if they were not there would people miss them but look at the importance of them the volume settings relevance of 210 yeah volume yes they are not used often but they are quite important when they use we need to identify things that people actually need and it is a functional frequency and relevance and i would say ignoring power for the moment the channel and volume given that we have been told to ignore teletext channel and volume are the only ones that stand out would appear to be essential so if we can design something that looks interesting or looks different incorporates the logo and then the colors and we can still have our interchangeable faces even if it is yellow and gray and having no buttons or buttons as an option i just thought i thought actually so interrupted yeah we are saying about yeah good technical problems of like someone on the television saying a channel number and it changed we can maybe have like an activation word because i have seen i have seen it use some computers before we just you address the remote you address the computer and then give it the command it depends whether if you want to make this so simple that anybody can walk into the room and lift it up and say yeah that is bbc one okay i mean you could actually print it on the device itself i am just thinking of the point of view of people you could still lose this remote this that is always going to be a problem i think and i suppose one to make it so desirable that if people lose it they immediately go out and buy another one anyway sorry carry on just carry on with 0 no i have dropped to you no no no you are in the middle of in the middle of your reports though well i was just kind of wrapping up there yeah i was thinking yeah restricts things that are relevant we can make things much more i think the 80% of people depend more on our mode that looks better combined with decrease the or take out the limited functions that we do not really use much well we have already taken it to the text but as in our channel settings and stuff it might turn people some people that want the whole functionality away but if we are marketing and work in a fashionable approach then we would be fashion over practicality because we could make it dual function we know voice recognition and we still have buttons on it yeah we could even have it as like yeah the buttons control this and the voice functions control the things that you would do all the time so certainly could so yeah we could power on and channel selection volume selection we do not have to really i mean the advantage of doing the way the buttons all together is it makes things cheaper yeah it probably would look better as not it certainly opens up the possibility for making it you know visually very distinctive yeah because you know it does not have to be a oblong box lined with numbered buttons yeah okay who sorry have you yeah yeah that is different given that we have already had an extensive discussion okay well i could do mine got there give yeah let us see if i can make this work 0 you have to hit like function and f something 0 f 8 okay is it doing yeah give it but 20 seconds okay okay okay okay so this is just about the technical functions so the method i looked online for examples of other similar products and then just kind of we are trying to brainstorm some possible design ideas and identify what the necessary things are what you really want to have a remote control do and then there are 2 different kinds that i found there is a user centered one and an engineering centered one which i will have a one which i will have pictures of and then we kind of have to decide which one this should be so these are the 2 different ones this one this is the user centered it has quite a few fewer buttons and then this is the engineering centered which has a lot more buttons and probably this is one that people complain about about having too many buttons that you do not use so basically what remote control is is you it is to send messages to the televisions that you know turn on off switch the channels and the volume of things such as that and so for this product it is going to be television only and then it has to have the logos for the company and the colors and so for my personal preferences i think this one is easier to use and has quite a few buttons we want something that sends messages easily to the television and i was kind of wondering about this example that they have it looks kind of narrow at the top and i was thinking maybe if it were wider at the top then it would be easier and so we have to decide what is going to make our product different the unique style maybe have it light up so it is visible in the dark the changeable face plates and the lighting up invisible when we were talking about losing it maybe to have a button on the television that you press and maybe if it makes a noise or lights up or something like that so it is easier to find if someone has it hidden under the couch or something like that so that is my presentation okay can i actually use the it is going to cause great technical problems over here i am actually making you use the they probably clip 0 yeah they are not connected to anything on the table they just leave them and walk around with them rather than the traditional in fact i will not even go that far something like this shape you know sort of something that you can sort of a more vertical shape that you can sort of hold in your hand such as i mean something hold up like that possibly with a couple of buttons like that but with the entire top with the infrared or whatever source so that it is flying up in all directions so that again the need to look at the technicalities of actually achieving that in terms of whether the power requirements of the such a source compromise our need for it being permanently available whether different technology i mean all these remotes are presumably infrared like they have been for a long time we possibly need to be looking at something different you know short range not like the older radio remote controls or you change next door to telly and we change this but i think basically if we are going to if minimum number of buttons is our priority then we should as i say really bite the bullets and reduce the buttons to absolute minimum possibly with back up channel and volume buttons and on off and nothing else so that it could almost end up like that again except the risk of losing it anyway okay so kate what are your thoughts on this which one does this plug into i think it is all there i can not do this 0 yeah that is kind of cool 0 well anyways okay yeah so i will just do my presentation on the working design okay just at the whole method of how the remote control works the basic function of the remote control is to send messages to another system the tv or the dvd player or whatever and it does this by well you need to start off the energy source and this energy source will feed into an integrated circuit chip and the circuit chip is the part that actually composes the different messages within the remote which will then be sent to the television the dvd to tell that what to do and you use your interface which controls the chip and thus the messages and the user interface is that is basically just the design of the actual remote what you will hold in the hands and what buttons will be on it 0 shoot just general findings what we need technically speaking for remote control is some sort of energy source some sort of user interface which i think we have mostly been talking about the user interface and the design of that a circuit chip within that to control and send the messages and sender and receiver and receiver and it is just sort of a little schematic diagram of what we are looking for this just kind of represents the energy source which feeds into the circuit chip which maybe then we can have that feed into a switch which would send signals to a subcomponent and onto a light bulb to light up once we start once you start pressing buttons also send signals to the infrared bulb which will be the part that actually sends signals to the television and then you have got your happy little tv watcher there so my personal preferences i just think we need sort of big energy source that will not die out perhaps some sort of rechargeable battery or a battery dock you could place it in so it would constantly be charged you would not have to be worrying about it running out of battery worrying about it running out of batteries and not changing channels for you a wide range of sender receiver so that you can hit the buttons from basically anywhere in the room and the channel will still be changed also definitely a user friendly interface and i think we have all sort of mentioned adding a locating device on it so when it does get stuck under the couch cushions as they inevitably do you can find them easily and that is pretty much it okay it seems to me there are a number of fundamental decisions to make before we i think your point about the big energy source is a very valid one i do not suppose we have got any statistics on the light expectancy of remote controls particularly sort of independent ones given the number of things you buy these days which i have a lithium whatever battery in that never needs replacing perhaps we should have the disposable remote control on typical usage the battery will last 510 years by which time i mean when all said and done digital television will be taken over in that time scale perhaps we should reduce the you know reduce the moving parts even more by not even having a battery compartment just having one that is guaranteed to last 5 to 10 years yeah if anybody manages to run it down then give them a new one fair enough it is you know it is what it saves in cost and you know there is a well it is absolutely a gimmick and it is hardly a gimmick it is practical so i think the idea of a rechargeable one is and i see a really high tech and it is high tech and it sort of just recharges itself if it is by you know magnificent waves or whatever it could have like a cordless floor in your house it is like got like a base that sets there all the time are people really going to use it though yeah people would think that people might forget people forget to put their cordless phones back on there yeah it is i mean i know sometimes my wife goes out in the morning and says 0 i should have put the phone on to charge and then she is had those of it so long but she does not look that by now i only remember to charge my cell phone when battery dies when it dies when it turns itself off that is when i plug it in yeah right so what do we think about the permanent battery i think that is a good idea that is pretty good too we are really going to the ultimate in external simplicity here you know cut costs in the manufacturing and you know if they have a high tech interior they do not know that much it may well be cost effective do they make batteries that last that long i mean certainly i can not think i think of the top of my head but there are certainly things that you buy i mean calculators for example they usually have a little light source they have a little solar yeah the little cells that well some do i mean there are battery ones that are permanently sealed and it impacts are most of them do not they have sort of a combination of the 2 like when there is light they will work off the light and then if there is not they will kick into this battery so we can maybe do something like that whereas there is a battery but if there is enough of light then it is using the light so it is not actually draining the battery all the time but you will have the battery there for battery there for yeah this needs going into the technology a bit i mean the the actual time that a remote control is actually operating i would think is it is probably no more than a minute in its entire life it depends if it is it depends who is using it who is just sitting there clicking clicking clicking people are getting rsi from it yeah they are clicking a lot yeah like like this this market research thing says number of times per hour that is used challenge selection 168 times per hour per hour wow that is a lot yeah i am just that does sound excessive but then again if you think it if they might have you know might be use it is like that is less than a 2nd yeah well that is right and and i do not even know whether the signal lasts as long as you actually keep the bottom pressed or whether it is just a sort of 10th of a 2nd no matter if i do not press it for i do not actually know but i think with digital tv like i know on my cable box you are not supposed to do that because the channel can not keep up with it if you just press it like that so you are supposed to use the menu and go through the different channels that way instead of right so i have got a message to stage 5 minutes i do not know how long have that appeared 0 right so i would need to sum up very quickly here we are looking at extreme simplicity we are looking at a radically different shape possibly no buttons at all but if you can incorporate channel change and volume buttons into the design then that is fine indeed i mean the role of the user interface designer becomes more important here because you know shape is no longer a serious constraint but we clearly only need the main buttons or clearly only need the main functions i do not see why we should not go for voice recognition and the only buttons that i think we need are channel control volume control and on off it needs to incorporate the corporate logo the gray yellow color scheme and there is no reason why we can not introduce interchangeable covers does that accurately summarize what we have discussed yep right so i just have one question so are we doing just the television television are we doing so not dvd play for okay i think that is quite clear the information we have been given me okay yeah i can email on television only in the constraints the email i got you know you mentioned the teletextes television yeah well that is one i sent to which was my internet okay 0 yeah 0 yeah okay okay okay from head office that is their okay so we can all give some thought to that for the next meeting thank you very much again okay