alright alright thank you for coming to this 3rd meeting of the design group i think we made some definite progress at the last one and come up with some interesting w suggestions for our our new remote control i will again very quickly just present some notes of that meeting the the the problem with existing remote controls we felt was that they are ugly and that people are prepared to pay a premium for something better they have got lots of buttons on them that people do not use and find difficult to learn and people lose them and we we thought that f for our our new remote control that everybody will want to rush out and buy that we are we should look at speech recognition rather than r rather than buttons and that if we have any buttons they should be very few of them and only for those functions that are actually identified that that people use that we want to go for a long lasting battery that we gua we guarantee for the life of the the product and a shape that will be instantly recognizable a as a trendy remote control and and b as a real reaction product so that w when people are happy with that they will they will want to buy everything else from us okay so again i will we will have the 33 presentations from the the the 3 of you and then we will we will make a a final a final decision and the the decisions that we need to to make today finally are what energy source we want to use whether i it is practical to use a a a long lasting one and i i think our discussion was around the fact that if we are going to go for a long lasting power supply then basically it is sealed for life and if anybody does manage to run one down we will we will give them another one and it it will be you know prominently displayed as part of the th the advertising literature that it is you know for life guaranteed for life now the the the internal chip and this is where i need kate is expert advice and given that th this has to to go to market as quickly as possible d d do we go for a custom designed chip or or do we buy one off the shelf and and program it ourselves i mean i am i am i am n not an expert on these things but presumably there must be loads of em already on the market that we can modify but that that is that is your area of expertise and then the you know the the overall design of the case is is is kendra is field and we we had some discussions last time as as to how we might go forward and we will we will finalize those da today and thi this is all linked in with the the the user interface whether we p go for voice buttons or or a bit of both and then you know f for the next meeting kate will be looking at the the the s the look feel and design kendra the ho how the the user actually uses it and and andrew of course the the product evaluation and kate and kendra will be producing a a model for us to to look at so if if we can have the the 3 presentations again please and p perhaps you would like to start k okay kate 0 i am sorry 0 sorry p there we go kay i will just be talking about the components design and okay basically i just looked at what exactly do remotes do basically they wait for you to press a key or give a voice command and then this is translated into light signals which are then seen by the t v the materials we are going to need to look at the 2 big ones are the integrated circuit chip and the battery and the in integrated circuit chip works in conjunction with a a diode transistor or resonator 2 more resistors and a capacitor and the battery works in conjunction with a resistor and a capacitor basically what happens is you will press a number or give a voice command and this creates a a connection within the the remote that allows the chip the chip then senses this connection and produces a signal in a morse code format this signal is sent to the transistor which amplifies it and then sends it on to the light emitting diode and which is then trai changed into a infrared light which is sent to the t v and sort of seen by the t v and which changes the channels 0 cool so as for how we should end up using this in our remote t couple of main questions are the buttons y the fewer buttons you have i guess the fewer internal connections and internal codes you are going to need however to n not have buttons or to use a voice commands instead of buttons might make these connections more difficult and raise the production cost that is something we should think about also we have to work within the company constraints and the company has informed me via email that they are experts at pushbuttons and that seems to be the most cost effective way of producing it also with battery connections the company has some limits on the batteries we can use so i was thinking perhaps a combination of solar cells with a back up basic battery and somehow between the combination of that 2 we might be able to come up with something that will last the the lifetime or the 5 to 10 years and we could still keep that original idea we also need to look at the chips v custom designed versus off the shelf and the custom designed will give us much more flexibility and enable us to incorporate the voice function that we all seem to have agreed upon however that is going to cost more but the off the shelf is going to be cheaper and it is going to be allow us to produce it quicker and get out there faster but it is going to be less flexible with the features especially things like voice activation which have not really been used much on remotes so there is not really chips out there that would be easy to to convert so if we were definitely going to go with the the voice option we would probably have to design our own chip and that pretty much sums it up okay so how sorry can you just put that one back up again please 0 yep sorry yep d d d okay i mean inevitably a b a custom design chip is going to be more expensive do we do we know by how much i do not actually have any price information no and and do we know how long it will take to develop a a custom chip it a lot longer than an off the shelf chip 0 w yeah we did the the problem is the the the voice technology is not really highly developed right okay it is sort of still still in an ex experimental form so it would it is hard to predict the time right i think we need to make a a decision here given that the company wants this on the market quickly and cheaply that would appear to effectively constrain us to an existing chip and thus therefore conventional button technology now before we go round everybody else does anybody i h have any have anyti ha anything to say about that i just have a question about that does it make a difference if there are just a few commands for example if you can pre program in like numbers one through 10 and pre program say you know 9 channels and then just use the voice recognition to say channel one and then you have programmed in say b b c 4 as your channel one as your favorite it is like to have a certain number of favorites and that w w just to to incorporate the voice activation in it is is sorta the trick once you have got the whole voice chip in there then it is pretty much the the world the the sky is your limit okay then it does not matter okay but to actually the the big step is to actually get the voice activation chips in there and working okay cause i must say i find it slightly surprising given that you know mobile phones incorporate voice activated dialing so i mean i d d for slightly different well no i mean it is if you you yeah speak somebody is name and it will dial the number for you so bu i mean the this this information is from is this is the internal company information is it bits of it yeah so of course mobile phones do tend to be more expensive you know £150 or something yes as well as opposed to the €20 €25 yeah true again but if it is without any without any p price informations that is difficult to decide also lots of mobile phones have got a lot of technology in them not just that so yeah yeah that is that is right it is like it is it is you can not cause mobile phones are expensive you can not say it is the voice recognition bit that is yeah but we do not know i mean i su i i mean if given that the the technology is not well developed and and given that it is it is never been done before th th the double risk perhaps we ought to stick to to buttons since the last thing we want to do is present a product that does not work thoughts well another thought i 0 sorry go ahead would 0 i was just going to say mayb maybe it sh like maybe we can like cut corners somewhere else to bring in over cost i mean do w do we think that the voice technology is fundamental to the project it is fundament well i mean i guess it it is something we have discussed since the the sort of the beginning so i th i think in in our in our minds it is it is fundamental but i do not know that the the upper echelons of the company would necessarily agree with that so i think you have to i mean i think we 0 yeah hm okay well i kinda think if we are going to have the voice recognition for part of it then maybe we should have it for the whole thing yeah i i i i i think that is and we have been talking about it the whole time yeah yeah anyway i am i am incli kinda inclined to say that we should just go for it right okay yeah it is the 2nd most important aspect to users that the device should be technologically innovative yeah from my presentation show so yeah it should be technologically innovative right okay so no that sounds good fine okay i it will have voice recognition if if that means if that means we can not afford buttons but i mean b b 2nd question okay cool do we need the 5 buttons for channel change up down volume up down and on off just as a a backup or just so that people can j j just sit there pressing buttons yeah yeah i i would say we do yeah i think so right okay sorry d did you want to say anything nope that was it that was it no okay shall we move rapidly on to kendra okay okay ra rapidly move the cable over let us see 0 good 0 yes is it going to work yeah it is thinking about it yeah it will get there yep okay yeah okay so i did some research on the internet and what you know the interf user interface are just aspects that are seen by users commands and mechanisms for the operation and there are just kind of a variety of choices findings so a lot of times they tend to look cluttered and these were just a couple examples of different kinds that are a little bit more unusual there are some special ones available like this one right here which is marketed towards children yeah huh different designs and one of the things that n we need to watch out for is a v in volume because people some alright bring a little picture of what i thought ours could look like so just kind of minimize the clutter avoid too many buttons and also one of the things that people have used is a slide button like you have on a mouse that possibly we could use that on the sides for volume for example have the slide button on the side and then you can pre program the channels the voice recognition and then the voice response sample locator yeah sorry y y yeah if i can interrupt you well d p kay do you want to say anything about slide controls i mean i think the reason everybody uses pushbuttons is that they are they are si simple cheap and reliable i think they are they are about the same cost really i i mean i think it is just sort of the the there is a lot of slide buttons out there i think it is pretty much the same sort of connection okay fair enough fine yeah just because i n for example if i am using a mouse i like to be able to slide it up and down so i thought it might be good for volume to just be able to kind of roll it and then have the up and down and then the this is my great little drawing yeah good good yeah so 33 there is 3 buttons on a slider 3 buttons channel up channel up down and y yes yes well if you g if you if you got a channel up down we can have a slider in that as well because if it if you no if you notice on the thing it it kind of like has got kind of if you you know it s kind of like sticks if you know what i mean up like one unit if you see what i mean yeah so it kinda goes up one then y like you can keep rolling it up but it is like like like like a cog or something huh so you kinda take it up one at a time okay the only advantage i was thinking of to having the buttons like the buttons on one side for the channel d and then the slider is that if you are just holding in your hand and you pick it up it is easy to n s know okay this is just the volume and this is the channel 0 this one on the one side and one yeah you could you could as l as like a mouse you could ye yeah cause i have definitely picked up remotes and like meant to change the channel and turn the volume okay yeah or vice versa so it would be kinda good to have them be feel completely different yeah yeah you would know what you were fiddling with yeah yeah like the shape of it almost like a mouse with a yeah that was or yeah th th the i mean thi this is what the we have to come up with is the the actual shape that people can ins instantly pick it up and and know know know what it is going to do yeah okay so we we are looking at sliders for both a volume and channel change well i was thinking kind of just for the volume but what what do you guys think of one sort just for the volume dep i dunno if it depending on the final shape of it cause you could have like we could i dunno it looks like you can c control the volume with your thumb and then you could control the buttons with your fingers yeah yeah yeah cause if yeah in that kinda position the fingers would be better for pressing and the that for rolling just the way it would fingers yeah i mean it is it is it yeah i mean it it it seems to me that it it al also has the advantage that it it the 2 are clearly different b yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that there is no no possibility of confusing the 2 0 yeah yeah so okay i am just going to pass this along right so that is sorry is that that all you want to say at the mo okay fine yes yeah right here we go right yeah this is my report on trend watching the data is come off internet from executive summary for us on the top 3 things wanted by the consumer and we got reports from paris milan on new fashions and the most important aspect is the l the look it has to look fancy look and feel instead of the current functional look and feel this is a saint well i was going to say yeah twice as important as the 2nd aspect which is the technologically innov innovative side of it so and the 3rd being easy to use is probably a given we have to try and incorporate so well i i mean i th i think that what we are suggesting ought to address all 3 of those exactly yeah yeah okay i s that out of sequence yeah sorry yeah and from the fashion watchers from milan and paris have said fruit and vegetables are an important theme for clothes and furniture and shoes 0 et cetera sorry clothes shoes and furniture huh and a spongy material to be used on the on the outside i had not thought of that that is different certainly yeah but i was going to say yeah fruit and vegetables important to this year important to furniture i am just going to say what f like it is in if if fashion if we are going for the it looks fancy then fashion is obviously the line we got to be going through yeah but fashions do do not last very long well that can kinda tie into our changing face things like we could have the fruit and vegetable theme this year and whatever happens next year we can have the face plates yeah yeah yeah yeah we can have a sp like a spongy skin on it and then we can just whip that off and yeah yeah yeah like the kind you get on like hand weights you know that kind of spongy yeah yeah that weird i dunno what that is but yeah a kind of yeah also means you can drop it without damaging it 0 yeah yeah it is good as well that is c cool yeah that is true you have we could if we could save depending on the cost of the product itself you know could we have a cheaper b cheaper power source and then just have it annually renewed instead of having a 10 year guarantee with interchangeable covers could just buy a new one every year a new one when new fashions come out yeah i i mean it its i that is an interesting idea it is like the old swatch watch where on only batteries ever got changed in those cause people just bought a new one when it went out of fashion but it is just never been seen as a a fashion item before yeah that is yes if if if they are made in sufficient quantity wh i i think it is easier sometimes to have them buy changeable covers for it than to buy a whole new one because you do not feel like you are investing in a whole new product w i mean we we can b but i mean my feeling is that current power sources are such that for relatively little cost you can make it last yeah you know a long time yeah but if we also make it cheap enough that people either change the cover every year or even buy a new one every year then it it is it is even better what if we included the batteries in the cover 0 yeah so like i like that that all c also kind of encourages em to buy new covers and yeah yeah so can i see that thing s just this as examples yeah yeah i n i know the only p i mean the the the the immediate thing that comes to mind with that is that it it it y you have then got the connection and you have immediately got a sort of unreliability so f whereas the advantage of having it plumbed in is that that the whole thing is all you know yeah completely soldered together and it it it you know total reliability but i mean i d i i yeah i guess that is true i know what you are saying and understand where you are coming from or well but like like more than just the battery like a complete different like you have only got like you know like th this bit is the bit you keep and this is the expensive bit this is like the chip and this is the microphone and then this is the power source and the bit everyone sees and then i th i s i think if we are going to go down that route then we are talking about even if it costs slightly more than that just building the whole thing in one then having getting cheaper production costs and yeah you probably are right you know giving people the option of buying a new a a complete new thing the advantage of a replaceable cover is that even if they do not it does not have a cover on at all it will still work totally yeah that is true then if you know if people lose the cover yeah yeah i mean they they might be well inclined to go out and spend however many euros on a on a new one rather than a a complete new re remote yeah well that that is just it with the covers yeah you are sort of tricking em into continuing to spend their money on our products without making em feel like they are being ripped off having to buy a new product yeah i mean it is it is up to it is up to yeah just another €5 to get so yeah yeah yeah it is it is up to our marketing people to to ma to ma turn it into a a fashion item right yeah and you know as as external fashions change then we get new new covers on the market and you know readily available yeah and and that is the sort of thing once you get the mold set you can just whip out different colors different pictures very very quickly that is that is right yeah yeah yeah like they have for mobile phones that are just fruits and animal prints and colors yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah yeah okay so i so okay right sorry we had not finished your 0 do not worry it is all said i was just going to say yeah are we going to make this as part of like like a part of the f like it it the fashions apply to furniture so are we going to make this part of the furniture it is the sort of thing that we want people to have prominent dis displayed on their coffee table to say this says something about me this is fashionable yeah this is fashionable with yeah i you know i am i am i am with it i am up to date and you know th the the design that i have got and and it could be a a home made design you know this says this is not just a a television remote control this is you know a fashion accessory so i mean the the the basic shape i is is what we i mean given that we have got you know 11 on off button presumably 2 buttons for channel change and one slider and basically nothing else w we need to decide on the just the basic shape of the thing and know whether we go down the fruit and veg route and i do not suggest we make it look like a banana but know sort of the the organic you know curved look you know t to deliberately get away from the you know 0 yeah the the the the square look of most current remotes and you know whether whether the you know the the fixed part of it is the corporate yellow or cause there is certainly you know the the corporate logo needs to be prominently displayed so that people s th looked at it and say right that is a real reaction remote control i want one of those i dunno that we should make the whole thing yellow i kinda thought with a you would have like a yellow circle with the r r in it somewhere on it yeah the the or or b yeah like an but i would yellow seems a bit of a strong color to make the ent like the thing no yeah i would i would yeah yeah but i mean just like white or gray or black or some sort of blah color no i d i i agree i mean we are we are we are simply it is simply required to incorporate the the the the corporate logo prominently yeah yeah yeah yeah and make that a fashion symbol as well well n well th this is this is the whole point yes you know i am i have got a a real reaction remote control to go with my real reaction coffee maker or or whatever and then people you know people demand more real reaction stuff well i was sort of kinda picturing like maybe a shape that is almost like a mouse yeah so that you know yeah when they hold it it is because a mouse is pretty comfortable to hold in your hand maybe we could make it a slightly different shape so they could hold on to it but that way they can have the volume on the side and then the channel buttons and yeah yeah have the power wherever somewhere yeah i mean that was just an idea that i had i mean i have yeah 0 no that well there is the sim my my idea was something a b probably you know a bit fatter than this but sort of tha that sorta shape so that you can just sort of ho hold it yeah yeah maybe yeah you would want it narrower than a mouse though cause it a mouse you are kinda just resting on it you want something you can definitely grip kind of a c w it i mean well it is sort of it is it is sort of a a mouse but held so maybe it would be yeah sort of a combination yeah yeah yeah you know so it is you sorta hold it in your hand like that i with you know and fiddling with the buttons yeah yeah and fiddle around with it and press it yeah so yeah kind of maybe maybe a little wider than this cause this is pretty comfortable to hold and then if you had maybe almost like a hairbrush like you could get the about the width of that end of the pen and then it widens up top and you can fiddle an yeah yeah then wider up here and then it would have a l wider thing to have the light yeah yeah the infrared light at the t v and just kinda change channels and adjust the volume and the power could be wherever up up the top or something yeah yeah cool what do you guys think about that yeah that sounds okay yeah yeah i am just i am suddenly realizing that yeah we are discussing how much how good it is going to be to change channels t we still can just tell it to i mean are we are we starting to get away from the the voice functionality of it 0 yeah yeah it is a very good point it is a very good point yeah i think we d i think we decided that w we are actually going down both routes yeah yeah yeah that the we n we need the the manual controls and that they should be of that form but that yeah yeah but do you know this shape also kind of les lend itself to to voice cause if you are you are holding it and you are fiddling but you can also bring it up like that and it is microphone esque yeah yeah then you just bring it up to your mouth and just speak to it yeah yeah yeah and just say yeah maybe we cou like w like we are leaving out the buttons for the the f less frequently used stuff but maybe we could incorporate that into the voice i th i th honest my personal view is that if it is not there people would not use it anyway i suppose but t there is the off chance that you know th the brightness is wrong on your t v or the contrast needs changing it is cer it is certainly possible i mean but they we we are going beyond w w given the state of the technology we want something that we kno we know will will work bu yeah well you can still i incorporate the voice with with less buttons i mean if the power button was also somehow like a menu button you could press that and or do voice commands and either volume thing could also be to scroll through other options like y and you could scroll through brightness and and sc and then you can you can minimize the buttons and still have those yeah that is a good idea yeah i suppose i sup yeah you know brightness and tint and stuff yeah if we we are i mean i am getting a clear message that we think that we should have those facilities available so i guess we could have a menu button as well yeah we could have the channels and the power and then a menu button and then the volume yeah so have 4 buttons and the volume instead of 3 buttons and the volume okay if we if we are going down that route then we need some sort of display do we need some sort of display but the television would be the display that things like that usually c pop up on a televi like you hit menu and menu will come up on television and have like tint brightness yeah that is on the t v yeah we actually use the television okay yeah and then y okay okay okay and you would use the scroll scroll through it yeah well i mean on a onto like a mouse the ru the scrolling button yep is actually a button as well you could press it you could press that and have it as a menu button yeah yeah that is true yeah press that is t yeah that might work i never understood how that worked though but yeah yeah it is like yeah it is like the mouse where you just kinda click it yeah you just press it yeah and you could just click that to so if you had like the menu then you could scroll through and then click it to select oka yeah yeah yeah you know what i mean yeah okay we got 5 minutes to go in this meeting okay so i d i think we have actually very conveniently just come to a good point to s to sum up cool so b b kate and kendra now go away and pa play play with a bit of plasticine or play dough play with play dough whatever it is on the other side of the atlantic and actually put what we have discussed into something i was going to say concrete but that is a slightly inappropriate word to something that we can we can see and andrew n can go away and th th think about how we can actually market this as a concept and not j not just a a a simple remote control can i just get some things clear just for my sake yeah certainly of course our energy source is going to be i think i think we decided that we are going to for for simplicity of you know long term manufacturing and maintenance that we will go for a a long term battery source cool i you know on the basis that that you know if we are going for making it a fashion statement then people are more likely to change it anyway before i it runs out and make an assumption that we we can aim for a battery that will last most people for we will say at least 5510 years and that we will w we will guarantee it for for 5 years yeah and we are having a custom chip we are having a a custom chip but given the the we have cut the functions down that will hopefully not be too problematic but given that technol technological innovation is important then we need to i will say it again technologically innovate and we we know we must resist any efforts to to try and water that down and interchangeable case i i interchangeable case seems to be important to the concept it it should be cheap you know if if we avoid any you know electrical connections yeah and i you know i if we can come up with some way of of allowing people to actually personalize it to whatever they want then i mean this is totally new we d we do not know whether that to what extent people do it or not but if they have at least got a a good selection of covers that they can use anyway and and if if we can keep them you know rolling then you know so they can get them in the supermarket when they go down to a any of the famous supermarkets i will not mention any mention any names it is it is good for the supermarket and it is good for us and it hopefully makes them feel better and are we going to have it il being illuminated from inside onto the buttons or the that i mean that is no because we have got so few buttons that it that actually makes that redundant yeah i think so too does actually yeah yeah cool yeah and especially for making them so like different and different to feel yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and the you know that that solves one of the problems of b of battery life cause that would well that would clobber the battery life so no yeah yep yeah i mean given the nature of the buttons we are having it is actually unnecessary i think yeah yeah are we having it that it is any angle or is it just as as wide cer certainly wider angle than than current so that if you are holding it you know yeah as wide as possible anyway like you are likely to and it is you know i i it will work most of the time like this or like this yeah not like my my mum who points it at the ceiling and wonders why the th th the television does not work yeah i mean i d i th i sorta envisaged that if if this was the the thing then sort of the the whole of the top would be the the infrared yeah kinda like this whole yeah so you could use like this and it would go so yeah cause i mean the r reality is people are they are going to be looking at the television whilst they are using it the chances are so if if they are holding it anyway yeah the they are reasonably likely to be holding it to use it then then that that is the sort of coverage that we want yeah okay d we are all clear where we go from here yep yep sounds good okay so thank you very much indeed and i will s see you all again in 30 minutes kay okay kay
all right over all right thank you very for coming to this 3rd meeting of the design group i think we made some definite progress at the last one and come up with some interesting suggestions for our new remote control i will again very quickly just present some notes of that meeting now the problem with existing remote controls we felt was that they were ugly and the people were prepared to pay a premium for something better they have got lots of buttons on them that people do not use and find difficult to learn find difficult to learn and people lose them we thought that for our new remote control that everybody will want to rush out and buy that we should look at speech recognition rather than buttons and that if you have any buttons there should be very few of them and only for those functions that are actually identified that people use we want to go for a long lasting battery that we guarantee for the life of the product and a shape that will be instantly recognizable a as a trendy remote control and b as a real reaction product so that when people are happy with that they will want to buy everything else from us okay so again we will have the 3 presentations from the 3 of you and then we will make a final decision and the decisions that we need to make today finally are what energy source we want to use whether it is practical to use a long lasting one and i think our discussion was around the fact that if we are going to go for a long lasting power supply then basically it is sealed for life and if anybody just managed to run one down we will give them another one and it will be a you know prominently displayed as part of the the advertising literature that it is you know for life guaranteed for life now the the internal chip and this is where i need kate is expert advice and given that this has to to go to market as quickly as possible do we go for a custom designed chip or do we buy one off the shelf and program it ourselves i mean i am not a not a not a not expert on these things but presumably there must be loads of them already on the market that we can modify but that is that is your area of expertise and then the the overall design of the case is kendra is field and we had some discussions last time as to how we might go forward and we will finalize those today this is all linked in with the user interface whether we go for voice buttons or a bit of both and then you know for the next meeting kate will be looking at the look feel and design kendra they how the user actually uses it and andrew of course the product evaluation and kate and kendra will be producing a model for us to look at so if we could have the 3 presentations again please and perhaps you would like to start ok ok ok sorry ok sorry yeah okay i will just be talking about the components design okay basically i just looked at what exactly do remotes do basically they wait for you to press a key or give a voice command and then this is translated into light signals which are then seen by the tv the materials we are going to need to look at the 2 big ones are the integrated circuit chip and the battery and the integrated circuit chip works in conjunction with a diode a transistor a resonator 2 more resistors and a capacitor and the battery works in conjunction with a resistor and a capacitor basically what happens is you will press a number or give a voice command and this creates a connection within the remote that allows the chip then senses this connection and produces a signal in the morris code format this signal is sent to the transistor which amplifies it and then sends it on to the light emitting diode and which is then changed into infrared light which is sent to the tv and sort of seen by the tv and which changes the channels so as for how we should end up using this on our remote so as for how we should end up using this in our remote a couple of main questions are the buttons the fewer buttons you have i guess the few internal connections and internal codes you are going to need however to not have buttons or to use voice commands instead of buttons might make these connections more difficult and raise production costs that is something we should think about also we have to work within the company constraints and the company has informed me via email that they are experts at push buttons and that seems to be the most cost effective way of producing it also with battery connections the company has some limits on the batteries we can use so i was thinking perhaps a combination of solar cells with a backup basic battery and somehow between the combination of that tube we might be able to come up with something that will last the lifetime for the 5 to 10 years and we could still keep that original idea we also need to look at the chips of custom divine versus off the shelf and the custom design will give us much more flexibility and enable us to incorporate the voice function that we all seem to have agreed upon however that is going to cost more but the off the shelf is going to be cheaper and it is going to allow us to produce it quicker and get it out there faster but it is going to be less flexible with the features especially things like voice activation which have not really been used much on remote so there is not really chips out there that would be easy to convert so if we were definitely going to go with the voice option we would probably have to design our own chip and that pretty much sums it up okay so how sorry can you just put that one back up again please yep okay i mean inevitably a custom design chip is going to be more expensive do we know by how much i do not actually have any price information no and do we know how long it will take to develop a custom chip a lot longer than an off the shelf chip in an off the shelf chip the problem is the voice technology is not really highly developed it is still in an experimental form so it is hard to predict the time right i think we need to make a decision here given that the company wants this on the market quickly and cheaply that would appear to effectively constrain as to an existing chip and thus therefore conventional button technology before we go around does anybody have anything to say about that i just have a question about that does it make a difference if there are just a few commands for example if you can pre program in numbers one through 10 and pre programmed say you know 9 channels and then just use the voice recognition to say channel one and then you have programmed in say bbc 4 is your channel one as your favorites like to have a certain number of favorites well just to to incorporate the voice activation in it is sort of the trick once you have got the whole voice chip in there then it is pretty much the world either the sky is your limit but to actually the big step is to actually get the voice activation chips in there and working i must say i find that it is surprising given that mobile phones incorporates voice activated diving so i mean i for a slightly different well no it is if you speak some of these name they will tell the number for you so i mean this this information is from is that this is the internal bits of it yeah of course mobile phones do tend to be more expensive yeah you know £150 or something as opposed to the €20 €25 there is any price information that is difficult to decide yeah that is right it is how you see you can not because mobile phones are expensive you can not say it is a voice recognition bit of these but we do not know i mean i said i mean if give them that the technology is not well developed and given that it is never been done before the double risk perhaps we ought to stick to buttons since the last thing we want to do is present a product that does not work thoughts but another thought i 0 sorry go ahead i was just going to say that maybe like a cut corner somewhere else to bring it to the local cost i mean do we think that the voice technology is fundamental to the project it is fundamental well i mean i guess it is something we have discussed since the sort of the beginning so i think in our in our minds it is fundamental but i do not know that the the upper echelons of the company would necessarily agree with that so i think it is a you know you know i just like that i much time 0 yeah well i kind of think if we are going to have the voice recognition for part of it then maybe we should have it for the whole thing yeah i think that is and we have been talking about it the whole time i am kind of inclined to say that we should just go for it okay and take some for each of my finding it is the 2nd most important aspect of the user is that the device should be technologically innovative yeah from my presentation yeah so it should be technologically innovative right okay so all right sounds good okay it will have voice recognition if that means we can not afford buttons but i mean same question do we need the 5 buttons for channel change up down volume up down and on off just as a backup or so that people can yeah i would say we do i think so right okay sorry did you want to say anything no no okay shall we move rapidly on to kendra okay quickly move the cable over that is is it going to work yes is it going to work yeah we will get that yeah okay okay so i did some research on the internet and what you know the user interface are just the aspects that are seen by users commands and mechanisms for the operation and they are just kind of a variety of choices finding so a lot of times they tend to look cluttered and these were just a couple examples of different kinds that are a little bit more unusual there are some special ones available like this one right here which is marketed towards children different designs and one of the things that we need to watch out for is a v in volume because people some of the so one of the things that people have used is a slide button like you have on a mouse that possibly we could use that on the side for volume for example have the slide button on the side and then you can pre program the channels voice recognition and then the voice response sample locator if i can interrupt yeah well do you want to say anything about slide controls i mean i think the reason everybody uses push buttons is that they are simple cheap and reliable i think they are about the same cost really i mean i think it is just sort of there is a lot of slide buttons out there i think it is pretty much the same sort of connection fair enough fine just because i for example if i am using a mouse i like to be able to slide it up and down so i thought it might be good for volume to just be able to kind of roll it and then have the up and down and then the yeah so 3 buttons on the slider 3 buttons the channel up channel up down if you have got channel up down we could have a slider on that as well because if you know if you notice on the thing it kind of like it has got kind of you know it kind of like sticks you know what i mean up like one unit if you see what i mean yeah so it kind of goes up one then like you can keep rolling up but it is like like a cog or something so you kind of take it up one at a time okay the only advantage i was thinking of to having the buttons like the buttons on one side for the channel and then the slider is that if you are just holding it in your hand and you pick it up it is easy to know okay this is the volume volume and that is just right on the lot like it is like meant to change the channel and turn the volume or vice versa so it would be kind of good to have the beat feel completely different you would know what you were fiddling with yeah i mean that this is what is they would have to come up with is the actual shape that people can instantly pick it up and know no know what it is going to do yeah okay so we are looking at sliders for both volume and channel change well i was thinking kind of just for the volume but what do you guys think depending on the final shape of it because you could have like i do not know where it is there it looks like you can control the volume with your thumb and then you can control the buttons of your fingers yeah in that kind of position the fingers would be better for pressing and that for rolling it seems to me that it also has the advantage that the 2 are clearly different yeah there is no possibility of confusing the 2 so okay i can pass this along right so that is sorry that is all you yes you want to set them out okay fine yeah there is my there is 0 wait 0 that is it there we go yeah this might report on trend watching the digital was coming from the internet from executive summary for us on the top 3 things wanted by the consumer and we have got reports from paris milan on new fashions and the most important aspect is the look it has to look fancy look and feel instead of the current functional look and feel this is twice as important as the 2nd aspect which is the 10 the logically innovative side of it so the 3rd being easy to use it is probably a given that is where you have to try and incorporate so i mean i think that is what we are suggesting to address all 3 of those exactly yeah okay my sequence yeah sorry yeah and from the fashion watches from milan and paris have said fruit vegetables are an important theme for clothes and furniture and shoes etc yes sorry cloths shoes and furniture and spongy material to be used on the outside i thought of that that is different certainly but i was going to say yeah fruit and vegetables important to this year important to furniture i just can not say like if fashion if we are going for the it looks fancy then fashion is obviously the line we are going to have to be going through but fashions do not last very long well that can kind of tie into our changing face things like we could have fruit and vegetable theme this year yeah whatever happens next year we can have the face plates yeah like a spongy skin on it and then you can just whip that off yeah like the kind of you get on like canned weights you know that kind of spongy yeah that weird i do not know what that is but yeah kind of yeah also maybe you can drop it without damaging it yeah that is true yeah we could if we could save depending on the cost of the product itself you know could we have a cheaper power source and then just to have it annually renewed instead of having a 10 year guarantee with interchangeable covers or just buy a new one every year a new one when your fashions come out i mean it is an interesting idea it is like the old swatch watch where the only batteries ever got changed in those because people just bought a new one when it went out to fashion this has never been seen as a fashion item before that is if they are made in sufficient quantity i think it is easier sometimes to have them buy changeable covers for it than to buy a whole new one because you do not feel like you are investing in a whole new product i mean we can i mean my feeling is that current power sources are such that for relatively little cost you can make it last you know a long time but if you can also make it cheap enough that people either change the cover every year or even buy a new one every year then it is even better what if we included the batteries in the cover 0 yeah so that also kind of encourages them to buy new covers yeah so can i see that and thing just this and the only i mean the immediate thing that comes to mind with that is that you have then got the connection and you have immediately got a sort of unreliability whereas the advantage of having it plomed in is that the whole thing is all completely soldered together yeah i guess that is and you know totally reliability but i mean i know what you are saying and understand where you are coming from but like a like more than just the battery like a complete different like you have only got like this bit is the bit you keep and this is expensive but this is like the chip and this is the microphone and then this is the power source and that everyone sees and then i i think if you are going to go down that route then we are talking about a big cost slightly more than that just building the whole thing in one and yeah you are getting cheaper production costs and you know giving people the option of buying a new a complete new thing the advantage of a replaceable cover is that even if it does not have a cover on at all it will still work totally and if people lose the cover i mean they might be well inclined to go out and spend however many euros on a new one rather than a complete new well that is just it with the covers you are sort of tricking them into continuing to spend their money on our products without making them feel like they are being ripped off having to buy a new product yeah i mean it is up to it is up to €5 to get yeah it is up to our marketing people right to make turn it into a fashion item and you know as external fashions change then we get new new covers on the market and you know readily available and that is the sort of thing once you get the mold set you can just whip out different colors yeah like they have very quickly that is right exactly exactly fruit and animal prints and colors yeah so okay so okay right sorry you had not finished your i do not know what i will say we are just going to say yeah are we going to make this part of like a part of the like the fashion supply to furniture so we are going to make this part of the furniture it is the sort of thing that we want people to have prominently displayed on their coffee table to say this says something about me this is fashionable this is fashionable i know i am with it i am up to days and the design that i have got and it could be a homemade design this says this is not just a television remote control this is a fashion accessory so i mean the basic shape is what we i mean given that we have got one on off button presumably 2 buttons for channel change and one slider and basically nothing else we need to decide on the just the basic shape of the thing and whether we go down the fruit and veg roots and i do not suggest we make it look like a banana but that is what the organic you know curved look to deliberately get away from the you know the square look of most current remotes whether the fixed part of it is the corporate yellow or because there is certainly no the corporate logo needs to be prominently displayed so that people look at it and say right that is a real reaction remote control i want one of those i do not know that we should make the whole thing you would have like a yellow circle with the rr and it somewhere on it but yellow seemed a bit of a strong color to make me like the thing no but maybe it should be white or gray or black some sort of black color it is simply required to incorporate the corporate logo prominently like that a fascist symbol also well this is the whole point yes you know i have got a real reaction remote control together with my real reaction copymaker or whatever and then people demand more real reaction stuff well i was sort of kind of picturing like maybe a shape that is almost like a mouse so that when they hold it because a mouse is pretty comfortable to hold in your hand maybe we could make it a slightly different shape so they could hold on to it but that way they can have the volume on the side and then the channel buttons the power wherever somewhere i mean now it is just an idea that i had well as i say my idea was something probably a bit fatter than this but sort of that sort of shape so you just sort of hold it you want to narrow it in a mouse a mouse you are kind of just resting on it you want something you can definitely grip sort of a combination a mouse but held you know so you sort of holding your hand like that fiddle around with it fiddling with the buttons yeah so yeah kind of maybe a little wider than this because this is pretty comfortable to hold and then if you had maybe almost like a hairbrush like you would get about the width of that end of the pen and it widens up top and then it would have a wider thing to have the light the infrared light at the tv and just kind of change channels and adjust the volume the power could be wherever up the top or something what do you guys think about that yeah i am just suddenly realizing that yeah we are discussing how good it is going to be to change channels we still can just tell it to are we starting to get away from the voice functionality of it 0 yeah that is a very good point that is a very good point point i think we i think we decided that we are actually going down both routes yeah that the we need the the manual controls and that they should be of that form yeah do you know this shape also kind of lends lend itself to to voice it is because if you are you are holding it and you are fiddling but you can also bring it up like that yeah yeah maybe like like we are leaving out the buttons for the flesh you can not use stuff but maybe you can not incorporate that into the voice i would honestly my personal view is that if it is not there people would not use it anyway i suppose the areas of chance that you know that the brightness is wrong on your tv the contrast is changing it is certainly possible i mean but we we are going beyond given the state of the technology we want something that we know will will work we can still incorporate the voice with with less buttons i mean if the power button was also somehow like a menu button you could press that or do voice commands and the volume thing could also be to scroll through other options and you could scroll through brightness yeah i suppose you can minimize the buttons and still have those you know brightness and tint and stuff i mean i am getting a clear message that we think that we should have those facilities available so i guess we could have a menu button as well we could have the channels and the power and then a menu button yeah and then the volume so have 4 buttons and the volume instead of 3 buttons on the wall okay if we are going down that route then we need some sort of display do we need some sort of display the television yeah that is a tv and then you hit menu and menu will come up on television and have like tint brightness and you would use the scroll scroll through it i mean onto like a mouse the scrolling button is actually a button as well you could press it yeah you could press that yeah that is true press that is yeah that might have i just where that worked though but you yeah it is like yeah it is like the mouse where you just kind of click it you just press it yeah and you could just click that so if you had like the menu then you could scroll through and then click it to select yeah yeah you know what i mean yeah okay we have got 5 minutes to go in this meeting so i think we have actually very conveniently just come to a good point to sum up so kate and kendra now go away and play with a bit of plasticine or play doh whatever it is on the other side of the atlantic and actually put what we have discussed into something i was going to say concrete that is a slightly inappropriate word to something that we can see andrew can go away and think about how we can actually market this as a concept and not just a simple remote control can i just get some things clear as from yes certainly of course our energy source is going to be long term i think we decided that we are going to for simplicity of manufacturing and maintenance so we will go for a long term battery source i know on the basis that if we are going through it making it a fashion statement then people are more likely to change it anyway before it runs out and making an assumption that we can aim for a battery that will last most people for let us say at least 510 years and that we will guarantee it for 5 years and we are having a custom chip having a custom chip but given the we have cut the functions down that will hopefully not be too problematic but given the technological innovation is important then we need to say again technologically innovate and we we we must resist any efforts to to try and water that down and interchangeable case interchangeable case seems to be important to the concept it should be cheap if we avoid any electrical connections you know if we can come up with some way of allowing people to actually personalize it to whatever they want then i mean this is totally near this is totally new we do not know whether to what extent people will do it or not but if they have at least got a good selection of covers that they can use anyway and if we can keep them rolling then they can get them in the supermarket when they go down to any of the famous supermarkets i will not mention any names it is good for the supermarket it is good for us and it hopefully makes them feel better and are we going to have it being illuminated from the inside onto the button so the i mean that is no because we have got so few buttons that it that actually makes that redundant it does actually yeah yeah and especially if we are making them so like different to feel yeah yeah yeah and that solves one of the problems of the battery life because that would that would probably the battery life so no i mean given the nature of the buttons we are having it is actually unnecessary i think yeah yeah i am having it that it is any angle or is it just as wide certainly wider angle than current so that if you are holding it you know any way like you are likely to and it is you know it will work most of the time not like my my mommy points it at the ceiling and why the television does not work yeah i mean i sort of envisage that if this was the thing then sort of the whole of the top would be the infrared yeah it is where you could it was like this and it would go yeah because i mean the reality is people are they are going to be looking at the television whilst they are using it the chances are so if they are holding it anyway that they are reasonably likely to be holding it to use it use it then that is the sort of coverage that we want okay do we all clear where we go from here thank you very much indeed and i will see you all again in 30 minutes okay