so we are here to talk about functional design now hopefully we have all got a better idea from than we did f leaving the last meeting as to what it is we are up to now so here is an agenda i will open you should know that i will be taking minutes during all the meetings as i was struggling to our last time and that will be easier for me now because i am not actually giving the whole presentation the additional points are just the stuff that we sent and that i forwarded on from upper management having a few bright ideas to make our lives painful now you can all give your presentations we can talk about the requirements and hopefully come to some decisions right 40 minutes for this meeting so a bit more time than the last one here is the additional points i just wanted to put those in there to see if you guys had any comments on them did you all receive that email yep yeah so does anyone have any overall well what comes up for me is that if we are going to if we are going to be marketing a product that is going to be having no teletext people are very comfortable with the idea of having teletext and using teletext yep and so we are not we are going to be a new product without something that people are very comfortable having right now so that is from a marketing perspective i i see i see a lack and so we have to go i think in the other direction what are we going to have that makes this thing better than well tha that 1st point could also be an op opportunity because in seeing that teletext is becoming outdated some sort remote control that can work with the internet there is the opportunity that is presented i guess right yeah no i i agree with you so what i am talking about is i see that one side we are eliminating something so we have to come up with another side which is okay what are we going to be targeting our market that identifies our product as better than because it does not have teletext it has ta ta ta ta ta so that is that is that was my reactions okay yeah but but we are sort of being dictated that this should only be for the television yeah yeah so we are quite fixed yep so we are really probably in terms of marketing are looking for that is that is a cost winner rather than a fantastic new feature product yeah bu but we we are designing only the remote we not design the t v okay yeah so we are going to be removing the teletext out of any t v yeah that we people use our remote with kay that is right i think we take with you so it is kind of a stupid decision but there is also the potential for mark there is a market here for our lost teletext right for example someone that just goes to the shop that wants a replacement wants it as cheap as possible €25 is the selling price we really have to innovate here i guess that is what i am that is what i am talking about is is that we have to find something that is going to be very attractive about this product cause somebody some people are going to be hap unhappy cause it took they can not ac access their teletext okay cause we are talking about 80% or 90% or 95% of the televisions out there are are teletext k yeah so so it is it is not that i am criticizing the product at all it is just when we eliminate that then what do we bring what are we bringing in to take the place of this and we have to d in my opinion we have to double up kay if we lose one we need to bring 2 or 3 okay okay i think that the last point is probably quite straightforward obviously the the w it has to be branded so then the double r will be our our kay on the product yeah i think one of can you handle that black and yellow i tho i tho i thou i think rol ro rolls royce might mind but do not worry i think w yeah one of the things that we should also keep in mind when we are doing this i mean our company is slogan is we put the fashion in electronics right so i think our kind of our target here is to have some kind of very like sleek nice look remote and we want it to be functional as well but i think one of the main selling points is that we do not want it to be clunky like like this thing here you know we do not want to a big clunker we want something that looks nice and it is fashionable and so so you have this nah so we have 3 presentations and i think we will go in order of participant number here so we can have a look at the working design 1st from participant 2 that is yes okay that is fine okay so it is enough but click it on off so you all know me i am the industrial designer and we have some basic components that our remote is going to need just basically every remote will need em we need some kinda of power d power source we have to decide on our our user interface which is his department but the in user interface is also a major component we need a programmable digital signal processor to to take the input from the user and translate that into into electronic signal which we pass to the infra red l e d which you aim at the television which and it receives that signal you need a on off switch i do not know how that got in there and we also need to have the if we want a universal remote we need to have encryption codes for the different makes of t v s so we need to know all the different you know all the different signals and so that will require some memory as well so here is just a basic layout of how how the remote would work you ha the v the power source is in the upper right hand corner there and you can see that we have the user interface here which is connected to the chip which does all our signal processing and then passes that signal on to the infra red l e d and that signal is then emitted and received by the television at the photo transistor so those are the basic components that need to go into this and everything else is pretty much open to move around now is would this be considered just a standard i think any des this is not this is not cutting edge technology we are talking here we are talking about existing technology no right i think nothing is being modified or upgraded or new discoveries yeah this is just this is just a basic layout of ev of all the components that w w are going to be absolutely necessary f to have a working remote we can add things in like if we wanted some voice recognition i mean that i mean that you can kinda say would would fall under the user interface and the digital signal processing chip okay okay do we have an idea of costs of different components but well the most the most costly components are going to be the chip and the th it could als basically the user interface and the casing are going to be expensive as well the l e d and the the transistors and everything else are you know they are they are pretty cheap kay so depending on what we want our functionality to be the chip could be expensive or it could be cheap depending on the n amount of memory we need in there and stuff like that and h and h you know how much power kay do we have any ballpark figures for that yet no i do not have any figures right now kay we we have to wait until we get to a more specific design phase for that yeah n okay but and i think a significant part of the cost could be the actual the actual casing itself and and you know the the b the buttons and things like that the shell i think yeah basically yeah okay okay so yeah that is all i have really okay thanks and we have participant 3 which i believe is pedro i i can give you that to click on hey mouse open and you want to get when we are fighting over it is also more lot more fun view a slide show that is what you want to do yeah just go up to view click do not yeah kay this does not work so yeah function design you guys know me pedro and what i found is we want to do fashion and i think honestly we should keep technology low and just simple basically and try to aim for design if basically a case will will cost the same if it looks good or bad so we ma we have to make it look good something cute and small the big chunky remotes are died in the 80s so we should just go for something that people will like to actually look at and although mo most people will buy s televisions and everything for that have loads of loads of little functions and everything and they mostly end up using simple functions and little things and most the people will not will not get too mad of actually having to go the to the s to the television to for instance tune in their the stations there is no need to have that in the remote so as for what i would recommend for the the interface design and i will change the colors on the on the logo but we should go for the user oriented device so simple controls and good ergonomics and although i th i th i am still here recommending the teletext so i will remove that i guess but we should go for the but i t i think what the the management recommendation was less that there is a worry that teletext will become outdated rather than we should not have it so i i still think if it is cheap enough functionality wise to include it really should be in there because otherwise we are just going to i mean even if it is necessary or not if you if you are given the choice between a t a remote with teletext or without when it really if it i if it is not more expensive for us to k make because as far as i understand it it can be operated with the same set of buttons yeah yeah right as far as i it is just the cost of an extra button so it should be in there i mean software wise there is really no difference yeah okay i think is not i have maybe a silly question i in the very beginning it said with the with the advent of computers there is going to be the it is going to be out moded teletext i i do not understand how those 2 things are connected how does how does computers and teletext h how why is one eliminating the need of the other i do not understand that well maybe what we are getting into here is the the idea of internet through the t v for example so that might play on what we can do yeah the they are basically aiming at saying that you would use you know a couple of years ago teletext to be the easiest way to check like for the scheduling and the next program and stuff like that and now scheduling to find out what what you are watching even if there is commercials you know yeah and now you can c look it over internet okay but i still think teletext is way more convenient until until we have the same commodities i think i ha yeah cause yeah i just i do not see the cross over between computers and television i agree i mean i do see the cross over in some sense but but but but with the the remote is is used for television okay yeah but it is not happen yet well for me yeah well you have digital t v still already so so if we make the cross over and we are going to view television on computers then we are then we are losing the the necessity of the remote yeah unless you have a yeah well there there is a for example on digital t v systems you have you can press a button and you can buy things in adverts s and you can you can view through a catalog for example a a family member of mine has got a system where you just you can yeah and there is other features for example on other systems where you can pause live t v and things like that they are just features from the internet from computers are are coming into the t v sort of under the covers but you still use it through a teletext okay so now the things to think here are that that there is going to be more functionality potentially that we can handle okay yeah but we we do not we are not aiming a command for that that is the thing and all of those require the other commands with more complexity and more software and i think a lot of that is proprietary anyways you are not going to be able to you like command a tivo with our remote i do not think but still there there is an opportunity if if it is for example a trainable one then we are just simply having like an up down left right an okay button or something like that might might do as well in future proofing it yeah but we would increase the price to try to make it a trainable one so okay well i dunno one way the other teletext was there but i guess we can remove it or you know make 2 separate interface designs i think if it is possible you should try to you know have a talk with management about that just you know yeah i do not i do not see the logic yeah i i do not see the logic in elimination of teletext i just i i but i am not a tech mind either yeah yeah and neither do i in fact i just do not see the cross over between computers and and and cause we are designing something for a television okay bu i will communicate that back to those guys there a a and th the message really we want to be sending to them is that although teletext may become outdated w there is no l logic in not having it in there anyway yeah i if it does not affect the price right it is just not yeah we are selling it to an existing market yeah but i i think what they are pushing us towards here is in terms of thinking of ways to future proof our system for future systems that have something else other than teletext maybe yeah but we are not putting some there is no no putting anything in in the place of teletext i dunno i am that is yeah and and yeah and and we are also marketing a product kay that is the problem it is what i am seeing is a is a mid range cost product so so w we can not go and pump a whole bunch of technology into this thing because all of a sudden we are going to have cost overruns yeah so if we drop if we are going to choose to drop teletext again what are we adding to the product that makes it marketable so if we are keeping it basic we are loo loo what we are looking to sell it basically is it is just being very easy to use looking exceptionally good that sort of thing cause we really do not have anything else there do we yeah i do not i do not see it and to me if i am going to market a product for b for beauty for for design i am going to i am going to try to market it at a much higher price i need to make it special with a high price tag i do not want to make it economically g competitive i want i want to market it as exclusive so i would market this product it at €89 and come up with some really beautiful exterior design or something th but but i do not think we have that flexibility but i if design if design is cheap and functionality is basic then €25 is probably a high price for a commoner garden stan standard t v so the place remote the then the place we are going to justify that cost is through through design through making it a a sleek elegant high priced basic remote does that make sense huh no i no i i understand what you say but what i am what i am okay we probably need to move along but my my concern is trying to find a marketing niche for this product yeah we probably should we we are doing alright for time and if i am coming in with a with with €25 which is mid market price then what am i going to give these people for this yeah so that is just my question but we can keep talking okay sorry that kinda cut into you there well no just i i would i would advocate for continuing teletext and those would be the basic commands as for you know the the case design maybe i will come up with more concrete ideas right now it is just the idea of simplicity and slickness cute and small right i am just thinking you know with all these universal remotes that are out there how many people how many people actually use every feature that ar you know i like these trainable remotes and things like that where you know it is just so confusing to do to use all these functions where i think the largest portion of the market is just going to you know they lost their t v remote they need another one that will work with their t v they want something that looks nice that that that is not going to break when they drop it that you know that maybe it is it is ergonomic it feels good in your hand something like that i think that is going to be where you are going to find the biggest you know market share so we are looking for something that looks good and just works rather than looking for any special features is that i think the more bells and whistles we add it is just going to cut into our into our profits yeah because i think as we as we add costs for things like for like if we add the voice recognition and things like that i think you know what percentage of the of the of the market is actually going to use that maybe 5% you know and how much yeah but we can talk a little bit more potentially in the marketing marketing presentation about this right yeah okay be a good idea i am sorry sorry i did not mean to cut in yeah sorry boss i am not the boss okay 0 p pedro i just want to say quickly i i would really like it when you can come up with some more bells and whistles eh you know sell things come to my mind is something that is voice activated i know we are getting into some i hope some big money on this thing but i think that is probably a question more for is that for over here for this guy here yeah yeah okay alright well it is kinda both of us us us user interface is it that is okay cause and i think of voice activated i think of of how many times i have i have lost my my remote and i can not find it so some way that i can i can find my remote by clapping my hands or something and and so so but this is just something i was thinking about that then your lights would go off though i am trying to find some bells and whistles cause when they talk about tel taking out teletext it is like what are we going to put in what makes this thing attractive and it is only for televisions so we everyth our our competition out there has got these these multiple adaptors where they can use em for their v c r s their d v d s their their televisions and we are coming out with one remote for television only and so to me we have to make this a really special product i i i do not s i really have to say i do not see the market niche for this product yeah at this price i do not see it yet i am i i go along with this because this is what we are given to try to market but i i do not see the market niche for this product without without some really sort of something really special to identify it as as unique in the market but we th that should be design yeah that should be the design basically right i think technology we would we we are not in the price range to do it we do not have the money to do it towards t f technology so we should we should aim at design okay have to do you have to do it in the box yeah okay well so so that is up to you then to to make this box in something that is absolutely extraordinary yeah okay maybe make it in the form of a gun we can sell it in united states i have a question for you does any of the the features that pedro is spoken about here have any implications we might not have thought about on in terms of just pure functionality in terms of making it work or the cost of that or i do not i think all these things are pretty standard i think we will be okay okay kay cheers onto participant 4 well you know for marketing f marketing for me is and how do i go here okay you can just click go go is that right no no no you just get off that you just click anywhere ah ha yeah what for me is it i d i do not know what i am marketing right now okay til you spoke and when i wrote this i do not know what i am marketing i just know that i i was identified as a a we identified ourselves as a as a developer as a manufacturer and as a as a distributor t to other wholesalers and so the th the €25 that we have identified as the sale price is a wholesale price rather than a retail price that is what we decided here so what i did is i i decided that that this this needs to be a product in a in a sense can market itself so what we have identified here as our main marketing stratagem is is in design we are making the most beautiful attractive whatever we decide it is so that means we have about 7 more minutes or 10 minutes left so i would like to have a product that that we can sell easily so i say inspiration so having something beauty something attractive something that in a sense will sell itself innovation i think fits into what we are talking about here with design cutting edge technology i do not think we are going to have that these were ideas i was putting together unless we come up with some new age product a as far as the casing is concerned i i want to make this thing something that i can identify as special in some way so maybe we can have some i i talked about environmentally sensitive maybe we have a product that can be identified in some way as advantageous in a home i do not know these are just thoughts i wanted to talk about who we are as a as a corporation that we are new we are aggressive we are competitive we are we are trying to provide a product from a new perspective rather than from an old corporate line so to me it is about selling d our identity our corporate identity along with the product what i found is that the projected costs are competitive we are kind of in the middle of the market but what i am seeing is that the market is ready for i i identified new technology but again because what i see is budget restrictions and limitations i do not know that we can bring any new technology into this thing if if we could have a technological something i have an idea p please and it is kind of along the s lines of environmentally sensitive and it may even fit into ergonomics and even kind of address the issue of losing losing the remote what we were saying it is a common issue what we can do is well you know that batteries throwing a aw remotes run through batteries like crazy solar yeah right and s for some people yeah well maybe not a solar remote but instead what about if we had like a power cradle but solar like a a cradle that is is there to hold the remote when you are not using it so you will always know where the remote is cause you have to put it back there to charge the remote and we can instead of having instead of having you know replaceable batteries we will just have a power cell that stays there for the life of the remote you never have to get go through the go through all these different batteries and also you can i i think it is a good opportunity for the user design or for not just for the user design but also for the just for the look and feel of the remote as as a whole you know you could have some kind of neat little you know a sexy design for d a cradle and the remote itself blah i like it i like the idea but we are talking about in cost is going to probably double it w it would increase the cost but boy we can sell this thing because there is no batteries it is environmentally sensitive i we can identify it as a safer product in some form and you could page the remote if you lose it maybe there is a button on the cradle yep that is right i really see but the cost i now the the question is can we make this for less than 1250 per no no no no we have t we have to change the end cost there is i mean i do not see it anyway we we well do we necessarily have to change the end cost because can we dl can we do that without changing it 1250 per product if we basically can sell more based on this yeah that is going to be up to these guys i my reaction is no but well what i can do is i can d look into ho well pedro and i can look into how much this might increase our our costs and you can look into what kind of effect an increased cost is going to have on our on our final numbers yeah we we can certainly push for a more expensive product if that is going to be well see i i see i i am an advocate to make this an exclusive product you know let us let us sell this wholesale for for €50 €60 let us make this thing really exclusive environmentally sensitive high tech design ergonomics all of this just make this thing yeah the the the rolls royce of of remote controls i i every home has got to have it if you do not have one hey what kind of remote do you have 0 you have got one of those 0 fantastic i want one of those too yeah i just do not have enough money right now i just do not know about that because in order to do that in order to price it at that kind of level i think we would need to have every functionality that all the other competitors are offering like being able to operate you know the d v d player and you know the stereo system and all that which is a pretty basic function that w we have opted out of and additionally we are m maybe not supporting teletext nah i think we can say with certainty now that we are supporting teletext but i do think there are some basic features that we do not have that a lot of other remotes are going to have yep 11 thing i do not understand is h they have they have given us this package okay now in my opinion we need to give them a package back okay they say they say okay here you go they gave us a fundament a foundation of of what they want and and w it is our place to kinda analyze and evaluate i do not think it is our place to create their product for them maybe it is i do not know what kind of role we have in this in the corporate ladder but to me it is like okay you have got your here is our ideas okay and then let them look at those ideas and they say yeah well we can we can raise the price 20% you know we like this idea this idea no but to me it is it is about a choice do we follow their directives or do we make presentations back and and then and then discuss beca i i do not i do not see the market niche for the product that they are handing f handing us right now i do not see it i don i i d i have to disagree though i think our market niche is basically people who need who have lost their remote or who have broken their remote and do not want to send back to the manufacturer they just want to run out to the store and get a remote and then they are going to look on the shelf and they are going to see ours is the nicest looking remote it does what they need these are not i i think that it and and th to get to back to another point sorry for cutting in but i th i think it is important to remember that that this remote has to work with multiple t v s yeah cause it is selling on its own right it is not going to be specifically for hitachi t v s or or whatever right right no i understand that so technologically if i understand it t v s t v remote is working exactly the same way as video remotes and d v d remotes all you need to do is train them to the individual one all you need to do is is know the the f like some 4 digit code so saying that it works with all t v s is equivalent to saying that it will work with d v d s and other things nope they have identified the product as not working for anything but televisions yeah y y you you would not they have identified this product limita that is why i say i do not i do not see the market niche for this 0 okay okay we have done this the interface will be different if we if w if we were going to have a product that worked for d v d s v c r s and everything i see then i can see the market niche but we we are only identified as going for televisions without teletext and it is like whoa we ha in my opinion we have to go with something that is extremely exclusive to make this thing marketable right well here is and i i would sorry because who wants just a television remote right i do not we he well here is my thing about that if you are in the market for this ultimate remote you are not going to go for just a television remote if it can not control if it can not control your your d v d player and a al if y if you can not get that all in one ultimate remote that is right that just you can throw all your other remotes away i am not going to buy a d €75 remote i i i have a tendency to agree with you i really do so we really can not chase that that is why i say i quest i q i question the marketability of the product i really question where we create the demand so i think what we so that is what i am saying we are really looking for something basic the the one thing that that that you said really struck a chord with me here in that we are we are carrying the corporate identity with the product but we are actually looking for a large profit at the same time where i would be inclined to go back to upper level management and say like let us just cut down our profit expected on this product because we are actually branding our company here we are selling more than just the product we are trying to get mind share about real reaction to to the people who are going to buy consumer electronics we want people to eventually say 0 that is that is real reaction that is a good m make it is reliable and and we are going to make it we are going to win mind share by either being a fantastic product or for it working it just being good reasonable priced and solid so if we can make if we can put an emphasis here on it not breaking i think that is in itself an extremely big thing i think that is big w okay if you if you drop the cost now if you make if you make go to the other side of the cost scale and you make it less expensive then all of a sudden now we are going into an a a new market area so we can say low cost good design beautiful wa da da da da da good design we only have a few minutes left but what i am saying is right now we are middle market is €25 a mid market price for a remote yeah for for multi for a multi function remote that is a mid market price okay i think so yeah in a discount right now you can buy em on sale sometimes for about about 18 €19 and that is for the multi functions d v d v c r catch alls okay and and they have em in a little box in the middle and and this is the consciousness that most people have about replacement remote controls so to me to market this a t only a television remote control we have to change consciousness we have to have something that will change people is thinking to identify this as advantageous and i do not know what that is it has got to be low cost or high cost with with special design features well i would be inclined to say if we can make the design better than any comparable remote while reducing the cost then that is the way we really should play it yeah if we can take it down to you know 15 rather than 25 and make a low profit margin on it but we are really doing that to sell the brand yep we have 5 minutes left rather th to to to sell for real reactions or my d and i can communicate this to to the more senior people within the company here to to get a reaction what about the idea that i had with the cradle how do you feel about that or how does everybody feel well how does everybody feel i mean i i well we g we are talking about the other end now i i think i like it i like the idea but we have t we have to find out no but i that is the thing i i do not think it is necessarily the other end the other the 0 the problem with that in my mind i just think off hand as a as a consumer would i want to buy that and i think maybe not because i have got a remote and i will take it to different chairs i will take it to different i w i do not want to go over somewhere and put it down it i if it is going to be somewhere that you put it down then it needs to be at the side of your armchair right and that implies that there is only one t v user so it is very good for some people but it is not a like well it lasts it would last for several hours on its own power but when you are done with it you put it back in the cradle but it it takes away the ease of use of the remote to a certain extent yeah well it you have to l sort of remember you have to d shift down the side of the couch to find it and put it back and yeah well i d i d i d i think it it in my mind it does not seem like something that 0 i would really want because of that fact but i i do not know that is just my opinion well i think again it is it we have a cost issue here you know if we are going to go in this direction to me we are going to the other side of the cost range are we going to make this selling selling the cost as a high high tech environmentally sensitive whatever or are we going to go to the lower side of the range again i do not see our market niche in the middle for our product yet i do not see it yet kay so what do we think maybe we should pedro do you have any opinion on it we should keep it simple medium low cost mar cost area and make it look good w a question i have in in a cause i i i think i agree with you on we got to make it a box the box is going to sell it i think the outside the casing really need to wrap up now can can can we have multiple designs have a modern have a traditional have a you know and so so instead of them all looking the same people can have maybe 4 or 5 different designs they can choose from i do not know what that creates cost or well the the problem with that is we may end up with a whole bunch of inventory of a of a poor design you know yep one over another yeah okay i hear that so yeah complicated but but what we could do is some kind of well i mean yeah we we need to i mean have a few designs to look at and then come up with something that i think we all agree is you know the best fit i think w what is really important is it has to look good it has to feel it has to feel good in your hand yeah it has to be durable it has to a and i think it is really important that it does not look cheap i think i think we have to make sure people look at it an and feel like it its like a quality remote yeah even though the cost may be low what ab what ab what about a a remote that is that does not maybe look like a remote just an idea just just okay cause i mean we all know what a remote looks like on the outside they are selling these things everywhere maybe that could be part of our design exclusivity is we make a remote that does not even look like a remote it it opens like a telephone or what if it looks like a pen does not matter yeah yeah i am just jus i talking about some something to make this thing unique a pointer it that is the thing i am going to keep thumping on yeah i will sell whatever you guys design yeah i do not have a problem selling a product that is not the issue i give you ideas you guys create the product once you have the finished product i will find a way to sell it do not worry about it i just give you these things now because these are my thoughts and feelings okay so just to touch on m my one last time that i had brought up i really un unless you guys are die hard against the fact that it is possible like it reduces the usability of the remote b and the fact that you can not lose it on your own i think it still might be a good idea to investigate having like a power cradle yeah okay yeah because i really think i in a certain sense it almost like for me i would want to have that just because i know at the end of when i am done watching t v that when i am done 0 i better go find the remote and put it back where it belongs maybe th th th that is just some people that like that i mean there is al there is also remote controls i remember that that worked a lot of people no no this has not been done in a while i think but th as a as a watch as a watch yeah there is remote control watches but i think they are a sorta 80s thing kay so it might not be easy to market in it but the the technologies came along and it might be cheaper to make now yeah they are not simple those things may have been inexpensive for all i know one thing i just thought about when you were saying that is that the p our target market is going to be someone who has lost or broken we got to stop that is what i was saying got to cut up who is lost or broken their their remote so how many remotes do they want to buy can we p can we sell them a remote that can maybe guarantee they will not need to buy another one exactly yeah and so with with with this kind of system or locator or something to to think about how have people been been losing or breaking their remote how does this happen the last remote you will ever buy and also presumably they have and and then and then design the product maybe some component of the product that can identify this as the last one you will ever need to buy well if if we are going down that then we can we do not need to go the it it strikes me that the locator feature might actually be quite expensive to make exactly yeah whereas actually just putting it in a power cradle might not be too expensive at all because that is just done with mobile phones you can just n we we have said we have actually similar products that we can take from and potentially cut costs there true right yeah the locator will definitely be more expensive need to look into whether we can do that but i think we we have some m mobile phone based products checking quickly our internet we really need to finish up here we can make it in the shape of a coffee pot but yeah we have the the power adaptor products we sell power adaptor products so for example there is nothing stopping us it is just it is that i think it is telling us to stop our meeting using that technology yeah so we have the c we probably have have on line in our in our system we have the ability to create this we are talking about yeah i think so without it being too in fact we can cut costs through using the manufacturing that is already going to be in place here a charging system right if if we can create this we have probably 5 or 6 or 7 really strong marketing characteristics right i think one of the things that we can put right on the box is never buy another battery okay yep you know something like that kay thanks guys yep no that is not what i want i want 0 look it here
it was the paper it was the paper it was the paper maybe pedro who does not have to give a presentation we all do we can switch around is that okay with these okay all right to swap these no okay okay okay so and you will click for me and stuff like that so you can stay seated for years yeah okay i hate these things huh that is a great opportunity then to learn how to be patient and not my thing yeah yeah it is a new thing to learn there is not it yeah yeah sorry for holding us up boss a couple of the tech guys got a little delayed there it is all right i understand you guys have a lot work today that is right we certainly do boss me i am not technical enough to work a clip which clearly does not work damn this thing yeah well we understand why you are a project manager and not technical director do not we yes we do 0 that is meant to be in there aha i see 0 0 cheers guys okay so we are here to talk about functional design now hopefully we have all got a better idea from than we did leaving the last meeting as to what it is we are up to now so here is an agenda i will open you should know that i will be taking minutes during all the meetings as i was struggling to it last time and that will be easier for me now because i am not actually giving the whole presentation the additional points are just the stuff that was sent that i forwarded on from upper management having a few bright ideas to make our lives painful now you can all give your presentations we can talk about the requirements and hopefully come to some decisions right 40 minutes for this meeting so a bit more time than the last one here is the additional points i just wanted to put those in there to see if you are you guys had any comments on them did you all receive that email yeah so does anyone have any overall well what comes up for me is that if we are going to be marketing a product that is going to be having no teletext people are very comfortable with the idea of having teletext and using teletext and so we are not we are going to be we are going to be a new product without something that people are very comfortable having right now so that is from a marketing perspective i see a lack and so we have to go i think in the other direction what are we going to have that makes this thing better that 1st point could also be an opportunity because in saying that teletext is becoming outdated some sort of remote control that can work with the internet there is the opportunity that is presented i guess i agree with you so what i am talking about is i see that one side we are eliminating something so we have to to come up with another side which is what are we going to be targeting our market that identifies our product as better than because it does not have teletext it has dot da da so that is that was my reaction yeah but we are sort of being dictated that this should only be for the television so we are quite fixed so we are really probably in terms of marketing are looking for something that is a cost winner rather than a fantastic new featured product okay but we are designing only the remote we are not designed the tv so we are going to be removing the tele decks out of any tv that people use our remote with that is right it is kind of a stupid there is also the potential for market there is a market here for lost teletext for example someone that just goes to the shop that wants a replacement once it is cheap as possible but €25 is a selling price we really have to innovate here i guess that is what i am talking about is that we have to find something that is going to be very attractive about this product because some people are going to be unhappy because they can not access their teletext okay because we are talking about 80% or 90% or 95% of the televisions out there are teletext yeah so it is nothing i am criticizing the product at all it is just when we eliminate that then what do we bring what are we bringing to take the place of this and in my opinion we have to double up if we lose one we need to bring 2 or 3 okay i think that last point is probably quite straightforward obviously it has to be branded so the double r will be on the product yeah can you handle that black and yellow i think rolls royce might mind but do not worry i think yeah one of the things that we should also keep in mind when we are doing this i mean our company is slogan is we put the fashion in electronics right so i think our kind of our target here is to have some kind of very like sleek nice looking remote and we want it to be functional as well but i think one of the main selling points is we do not want it to be clunky like this thing here you know we do not want a big clunker we want something that looks nice and it is fashionable so you have this so we have 3 presentations and i think we will go in order of participant number here so we can have a look at the working design 1st and participant 2 that is yes that is fine okay okay so i have that to click it on with so you all know me i am the industrial designer and we have some basic components that our remote is going to need just basically every remote will need them we need some kind of power source we have to decide on our user interface which is his department but the user interface is also a major component we need a programmable digital signal processor to take the input from the user and translate that into electronic signal which we pass to the infrared led which you aim at the television and it receives that signal you need an off switch i do not know how that got in there and we also need to have the if we want a universal remote we need to have encryption codes for the different makes of tvs so we need to know all the different you know all the different signals and so that i will require some memory as well so here is just a basic layout of how how the remote would work you have the the power sources in the upper right hand corner there and you can see that we have the user interface here which is connected to the chip which does all of our signal processing and then passes that signal on to the infrared led and that signal is then emitted and received by the television at the photo transistor so those are the basic components that need to go into this and everything else is pretty much open to move around that is would just be considered just a standard this is not cutting edge technology we are talking here we are talking about existing technology right nothing has been modified or upgraded or new discoveries this is just a basic layout of all the components that are going to be absolutely necessary to have a working remote we can add things in like if we wanted some voice recognition i mean that i mean that you can kind of say would would fall under the user interface and the digital signal processing chip do we have an idea of costs of different components well the most costly components are going to be the chip and the it could also basically the user interface and the casing are going to be expensive as well the led and the transistors and everything else are you know they are pretty cheap so depending on what we want our functionality to be the chip could be expensive or it could be cheap depending on the amount of memory we need in there and stuff like that and you know do we have any ballpark figures for that yet i do not have any figures right now okay we have to wait until we get to the more specific design phase for yeah but and i think a significant part of the cost could be the actual the actual casing itself and and you know the the the the the buttons and things like that the shell yeah basically yeah okay okay so yeah that is all i have really okay thanks and we have participant 3 which i believe is pedro i i can give you that to click on 00 pardon bupon and you want to get we were fighting over it it was more a lot of fun you slide show i think that is what you want to do yeah just go up to view click down here okay this does not work so yeah function design you guys know me pedro and what i have found is we want to do fashion and i think honestly we should keep technology low low and just simple basically and try to aim for design basically a case will cost the same if it looks good or bad so we have to make it look good something cute and small the big chanku remotes are dead in the 80s so we should just go for something that people like to actually look at and although most people will buy televisions and everything that have loads of loads of little functions and everything and they mostly end up using simple functions and little things and most of the people will not get too mad of actually having to go to the television to for instance tune in their stations there is no need to have that in the remote so as for what i would recommend for the interface design and i will change the on the logo but we should go for the user oriented device so simple controls and good ergonomics and although i am still here recommending the teletext so i will remove that i guess but we should go for the i think what the management recommendation was less that there is a worry that teletext would become outdated rather than we should not have it so i still think if it is cheap enough functionality to include it really should be in there because otherwise we are just going to i mean even if it is necessary or not if you are given the choice between a remote with teltex or without when it really if it is not more expensive for us to make because as far as i understand it it can be operated with the same set of buttons yeah right as far as it should be in there it is just the cost of an extra button i mean software rise there is really no difference okay i have maybe a silly question in the very beginning it said with the advent of computers there is going to be outmoded teletext i do not understand how those 2 things are connected how does computers and teletext why is one eliminating the need of the other i do not understand that well maybe what we are getting into here is the idea of internet through the tv for example so that may play on what we can do they are basically aiming at saying that you would use you know a couple years ago tax would be the easiest way to check like for scheduling in the next program and stuff like that and not what what you are watching even if there is commercials you know okay and now you can look at the internet but i still think that tax is very convenient until until we have the same commodities yeah because yeah i just i do not see the crossover between computers and television i mean i do see the crossover in some sense but it is not happening well but the remote is it is used for television okay so so if we make to cross over and we are going to view television on computers then we are losing the necessity of the remote well there is for example in digital tv systems you have you can press a button and you can buy things in adverts and you can view through a catalog for example a family member of mine has got a system where you just you can and there is other features for example in other systems where you can pause live tv and things like that it just features from the internet from computers that are coming into the tv are under the covers but you still use it through a teletext so things to think here are that there is going to be more functionality yeah but we are not aiming to command for that that is the thing all of those require other commands with more complexity and more software i think a lot of that is proprietary anyways you are not going to be able to command at ev with our remote i do not think but still there is an opportunity if it is for example a trainable one then we just simply having like an up down left right an ok button or something like that might do as well in future proofing it yeah but we would increase the price to try to make it a trainover one okay well i do not know one way or the other teletext was there but i guess we can remove it or you know make 2 separate i think if it is possible you should try to you know have to talk with management about that just you know i do not see the logic i do not see the logic in elimination of teletext i just i am not a tech mind either i just do not see the crossover between computers and because we are just designing something for a television i will communicate that back to those guys and the message we really want to be sending to them is that although teletext may become outdated there is no logic in not having it in there anyway if it does not affect the price we are selling it to an existing market but i think what they are pushing is towards here is in terms of thinking of ways to future proof our system for future systems that have something else other than teletext maybe yeah but we are not putting anything in the place of television in the place of teletext yeah and we are also marketing a product what i am seeing is a mid range cost product so we can not go and pump a whole bunch of technology into this thing because all of a sudden we are going to have cost overruns so if we are going to choose to drop teletext again what are we adding to the product that makes it marketable so if we are keeping it basic what we are looking to sell it basically is it is just being very easy to use looking exceptionally good that sort of thing because we really do not have anything else there do we i do not i do not see it and to me if i am going to market a product for for beauty for for design i am going to i am going to try to market it at a much higher price i need to make it special with a high price tag i do not want to make it economically competitive i want i want to market it as exclusive so i would market this product it at €89 and come up with some really beautiful exterior design something that but but i do not think we have that if design is cheap and functionality is basic then €25 is probably a high price for a common or garden standard tv so the place we are going to justify that cost is through design through making it a sleek elegant high priced basic remote does that make sense no i understand what you are saying but what i am okay we probably need to move along my concern is trying to find a marketing niche for this product and if i am coming in with €25 which is mid market price then what am i going to give these people for this so that is just my question but we can keep talking okay sorry can i cut into you there no i would advocate for a continual teletext and those would be the basic commands as for really the case of design maybe i will come up with more concrete ideas right now it is just the idea of simplicity and slickness cute and small i am just thinking you know with all these universal remotes that are out there how many people actually use every feature that are you know like these trainable remotes and things like that where you know it is just so confusing to do to use all these functions where i think the largest portion of the market is just going to you know they lost their tv remote they need another one that will work with their tv they want something that looks nice that is not going to break when they drop it that maybe it is ergonomic it feels good in your hand something like that i think that is going to be where you are going to find the biggest market share so we are looking for something that looks good and just works rather than looking for any special features i think the more bells and whistles we add it is just going to cut into our profits because i think as we add costs for things like if we had the voice recognition and things like that i think you know what percentage of the market is actually going to use that maybe 5% well we can talk a lot more potentially in the marketing presentation about this yeah okay be a good idea sorry i am sorry i did not mean to cut it sorry boss i am not the boss okay pedro i just want to say quickly i would really like it when you can come up with some more bells and whistles huh you know things come to my mind is something that is voice activated i know we are getting into some big money on this thing i think that is probably a question more for is that for over here yeah yeah okay well that is kind of both of us use the interface and i think of voice activated i think of how many times i have lost my remote and i can not find it so some way that i can find my remote by clapping my hands or something and so so but that is just something i am trying to find some bells and whistles because when they talk about taking out teletext it is like what are we going to put in what makes this thing attractive and it is only for televisions so our competition out there has got these multiple adapters where they can use them for their vcrs their dvds their televisions and we are coming out with one remote for television only and so to me we have to make us a really special product i really have to say i do not see the market niche for this product at this price i do not see it yet i go along with this because this is what we are given to try to market but i do not see the market niche for this product without something really special to identify it as unique in the market well that should be designed yeah yeah that should be the design basically i think technology we are not in the price range to do it we do not have the money to do it towards technology so we should do it in the box yeah okay well so that is up to you then to make this box in something that is just absolutely extraordinary maybe make it in the form of a gun we can sell it in the united states i have a question for you does any of the features that pedro has spoken about here have any implications we might not have thought about in terms of just pure functional functionality i do not work or the cost of that i think all these things are pretty standard i think will be okay okay cheers and to it has been you know for marketing marketing for me is and how do i go here how do i go here okay you can just go go no no you just get off that you just click anywhere huh yeah what for me is it i do not know what i am marketing right now okay until you spoke and when i wrote this i do not know what i am marketing i just know that i was identified as a we identified ourselves as a developer as a manufacturer and as a distributor to other wholesalers and so the €25 that we have identified as the sale price is a wholesale price rather than a retail price that is what we decided here so what i did is i decided that this needs to be a product in a sense can market itself so what we have identified here as our main marketing stratagem is in design we are making the most beautiful attractive whatever we decide it is so that means we have about 7 more minutes or 10 minutes left so i would like to have a product that we can sell easily so i say inspiration so having something beauty something attractive something that in a sense will sell itself innovation i think fits into what we are talking about here with design cutting edge technology i do not think we are going to to have that these were ideas i was putting together unless we come up with some new age product as far as the casing is concerned i want to make this thing something that i can identify as special in some way so maybe we can have some i talked about environmentally sensitive maybe we have a product that can be identified in some way as advantageous in the home i do not know these are just thoughts i wanted to talk about who we are as a corporation that we are new we are aggressive we are competitive we are trying to provide a product from a new perspective rather than from an old corporate line so to me it is about selling our identity our corporate identity along with the product what i found is that the projected costs are competitive we are kind of in the middle of the market but what i am seeing is that the market is ready for i identified new technology but again because what i see is budget restrictions and limitations i do not know that we can bring any new technology into this thing if we could have a technological something i have an idea please and it is kind of along this lines of environmentally sensitive and it may even fit into ergonomics and even kind of address the issue of losing the remote what we were saying is a common issue what we can do is well you know that batteries throwing a run through batteries like crazy yeah right and solar for some people yeah well maybe not a solar remote but instead what about if we had like a power cradle like a cradle that is is there to hold the remote when you are not using it so you will always know where the remote is because you have to put it back there to charge the remote and we can instead of having instead of having you know replaceable batteries we will just have a power cell that is there for the life of the remote you never have to get go through the go through all these different batteries and also you can i think it is a good opportunity for the user design or for not just for the user design but also for the just for the look and feel of the remote as a whole you know you could have some kind of neat little you know a sexy design for a cradle in the remote itself well i like it i like the idea but we are talking about in cost is going to probably double it would increase the cost but boy we can sell this thing because there is no batteries it is environmentally sensitive we can identify it as a safer product in some form and you could page the remote if you lose it maybe there is a button on the cradle yeah that is right i really see now the question is can we make this for less than $1250 no no we have to change the in cost i do not see it anyway i do not necessarily have to change the end cost because can we do that without changing it $1250 per product if we basically can sell more based on this yeah that is going to be up to these guys well my reaction is no what i can do is i can look into how well pedro and i can look into how much this might increase our costs and you can look into what kind of effect and increased cost is going to have on our final numbers yeah they can certainly push for a more expensive product well see i am an advocate to make this an exclusive product you know let us sell this thing wholesale for €50 €60 let us make this thing really exclusive environmentally sensitive high tech design ergonomics all of this just make this thing yeah the rolls royce of remote controls every home has got to have if you do not have one hey what kind of remote do you have 0 you have got one of those 0 fantastic i want one of those too i just do not have enough money right now i just do not know about that because in order to do that in order to in order to price it at that kind of level i think we would need to have every functionality that all the other competitors are offering like being able to operate you know the dvd player and you know the stereo system and all that which is a pretty basic function that we have opted out of and additionally we are maybe not supporting teletext i think we can see with certainty now that we are supporting teletext but i do think there are some basic features that we do not have that a lot of other remotes are going to have one thing i do not understand is they have given us this package okay now in my opinion we need to give them a package back okay they say okay here you go they gave us a fundament a foundation of what they want and it is our place to kind of analyze and evaluate i do not think it is our place to create their product for them maybe it is i do not know what kind of role we have in the corporate ladder but to me it is like okay you have got your here is our ideas okay and then let them look at those ideas and they say yeah well we can we can raise the price 20% you know we like this idea this idea no but to me it is about a choice do we follow their directives or do we make presentations back and then discuss because i do not see the market niche for the product that they are handing us right now i do not see it i have to disagree though i think our market niche is basically people who who have lost their remote or have broken their remote and do not want to send back to the manufacturer they just want to run out to the store and get a remote and then they are going to look on the shelf and they are going to see ours is the nicest looking remote it does what they need these are not i think that and to get back to another point sorry for cutting in but i think it is important to remember that this remote has to work with multiple tvs yeah because it is selling on its own it is not going to be specifically for hitachi tvs i understand it so technologically if i understand it tv remotes working exactly the same way as video remotes and dvd remotes all you need to do is train them to the individual one or all you need to do is no like some 4 digit code so saying that it works with all tvs is equivalent to saying that it will work with dvds no they have identified the product as not working for anything with television they have identified as product limit that is why i say i do not see the market niche for this if we were going to have a product that worked for dvds vcrs and everything then i can see the market niche but we are only identified as going for televisions without teletext and it is like in my opinion we have to go with something that is extremely exclusive to make this thing marketable because who wants just a television remote i do not well here is my thing about that if you are in the market for this ultimate remote you are not going to go for just a television remote if it can not control your dvd player if you can not get that all in one ultimate remote that just you can throw all your other remotes away i am not going to buy a 75 year 0 remote i have a tendency to agree with you i really do that is why i say i question the marketability of the product i really question where we create the demand we are really looking for something basic the one thing that you said really struck a chord with me here in that we are carrying the corporate identity with the product but we are actually looking for a large profit at the same time where i would be inclined to go back to upper level management and say let us just cut down our profit expected on this product because we are actually branding our company here we are selling more than just the product we are trying to get mindshare about real reaction to the people who are going to buy consumer electronics we want people to eventually say 0 that is real reaction that is a good make it is reliable and we are going to make we are going to win mindshare by either being a fantastic product or for it working it just being good reasonable priced and solid so if we can put an emphasis here on it not breaking i think that is in itself i think that is big okay so if you drop the cost now if you make if you make go to the other side of the cost scale and you make it less expensive then all of a sudden now we are going into a new market area so we can say low cost good design beautiful but what i am seeing is right now we are middle market it is €25 a mid market price for a remote yeah for multi for multi function remote that is a mid market price in a discount right now you can buy them on sale sometimes for about about 18 €19 and that is for the multi functions dvd vcr catchalls and and they have them in the little box in the middle and and this is the consciousness that most people have about replacement remote controls so to me to market just only a television remote control we have to change consciousness we have to have something that will change people is thinking to identify this as advantageous and i do not know what that is it has got to be low cost or high cost with special design features well i would be inclined to say if we can make the design better than any comparable remote while reducing the cost then that is the way we really should play it yeah if we can take it down to 15 rather than 25 and make a low profit margin on it but we are really doing that to sell the brand we have 5 minutes left rather to sell for real reactions and i can communicate this to the more senior people within the company here to get reactions what about the idea that i had with the cradle how do you feel about that or how does everybody feel it we are talking about the other end now i like it i like the idea but we have to find out i do not think it is necessarily the other end the problem with that in my mind i just think offhand as a consumer would i want to buy that and i think maybe not because i have got a remote and i will take it to different chairs i will take it to different i do not want to go over somewhere and put it down if it is going to be somewhere that you put it down then it needs to be at the side of your armchair and that implies that there is only one tv user so it is very good for some people it would last for several hours on its own power but when you are done with it you put it back in the critical but it takes away the ease of use of the remote to a certain extent you have to sort of remember you have to shift down the side of the couch to find it and put it back and i think in my mind it does not seem like something that 0 i really want because of that fact but i do not know that is just my opinion well i think again we have a cost issue here if we are going to go in this direction to me we are going to the other side of the cost range are we going to make this selling the cost as a high tech environmentally sensitive whatever are we going to go to the lower side of the range again i do not see our market niche in the middle for our product yet i do not see it yet so what do we think maybe we should pedro do you have any opinion on it we should keep it simple medium low cost area and make it look good a question i have in because i think i agree with you on we got to make it the box the box is going to sell it i think the outside of the casing can we have multiple designs have a modern have a traditional have a you know and so instead of them all looking the same people can have maybe 4 or 5 different designs they can choose from i do not know what that creates cost or well the problem with that is we may end up with a whole bunch of inventory of a yeah one over another yeah okay i hear that so complicated a bit but what we could do is some kind of well i mean yeah we need to i mean have a few designs to look at and then come up with something that i think we all agree is know the best fit i think what is really important is it has to look good it has to feel it has to feel good in your hand it has to be durable it has to and i think it is really important that it does not look cheap i think i think we have to make sure that people look at it and feel like it it is like a quality remote even though the cost maybe what about a remote that does not maybe look like a remote just an idea just okay because i mean we all know what a remote looks like on the outside they are selling these things everywhere maybe that could be part of our design exclusivity as we make a remote that does not even look like a remote it opens like a telephone or what if it looks like a pen it does not matter yeah i am just talking about something to make this thing unique that is the thing i am going to keep thumping on i will sell whatever you guys designed i do not have a problem selling a product that is not the issue i give you ideas you guys create the product once you have the finished product i will find a way to sell it do not worry about it i just give you these things now because these are my thoughts and feelings so just to touch on my one last time that i had brought up i really unless you guys are die hard against the fact that it is possible like it reduces the usability of the remote in the fact that you can not lose it on your own i think it still might be a good idea to investigate having a power cradle because i really think in a certain sense it almost like for me i would want to have that just because i know at the end of when i am done watching tv that when i am done 0 i better go find the remote and put it back where it belongs maybe that is just some people that like that there is also remote controls i remember that worked this has not been done in a while i think but as a watch as a watch yeah there was remote control watches but i think there are sort of 80s things so it might not be easy to market in it but the technologies came along that it might be cheaper to make now those things might have been expensive for all i know one thing i just thought about when you were saying that is it our target market is going to be someone who has lost or broken that is what i was saying who is lost or broken they are remote so how many remotes do they want to buy can we sell them a remote that can maybe guarantee they will not need to buy another one and so with this kind of system or a locator or something to think about how have people been losing or breaking their remotes how does this happen and then design the product maybe some component of the product that can identify this as the last one you will ever need to be well if we are going down that then we do not need to go it strikes me that the locator feature might actually be quite expensive to make whereas actually just putting it in the power cradle might not be too expensive at all because that is just done with mobile phones we have actually similar products that we can take from and potentially cut costs there we need to look into whether we can do that but i think we have some mobile phone based products checking quickly or internet we really need to finish up here we could make it in the shape of a coffee pot yeah we have the power adapter products we sell power adapter products so for example there is nothing stopping us i think it is telling us to stop our meeting so we probably have online in our system we have the ability to create this we are talking about yeah that is not without it being to in fact we can cut costs through using the manufacturing that is already going to be in place here if we can create this we have probably 5 or 6 or 7 really strong marketing characteristics i think one of the things that we can put right on the box never buy another battery yeah you know something like that okay thanks guys no that is no that is no one i want my mic fell off a bit 0 look you here we have to leave i do not but i do not want to leave i like it i am going to