Remote Control Design Meeting

[00:05.340] I sent him an email, he probably read them anyway. Yeah, that's true. Although, do we really want the answer? Yeah. So if we don't ask, we can push it off. Exactly, yeah. At the end we'll say, "Yeah, but you never gave us any tests, okay?" Yeah. But so he's supposed to give us test subjects. Well, sort of. That's how I understand it. He said he might— he would try. He would— he would make something up. Okay. Yeah, find some people. That's how I understood it. Yeah. Yeah. The thing is, you know. Because we're going to get an email on our MSC. Right. We're looking for volunteers. Yes. I think if we— if we don't get anything from him, then we should just do our friends, basically. Yeah. If they have time. It's hard finding people. Well, they're going to need us. Or they're your friends. They're going to need us. Yeah, I know, but. The perception project, and things like that. Yeah. It's not going to take long, is it? Yeah, that's true. And you're going to be half an hour, maybe. Yeah. You need to use each other. Yeah. Actually, some other friends of mine, in different programs, might be more willing. Have more of a break. So then like an idea: get a range of types of people as well. Like not like highly computer— like not. Well, they will be. You know, Linux literate too. They'll have to be, yeah. Yeah. I think that might be a good thing as well. Instead of a wider range, of people. So how many people do we get to try and— I don't know. I think like 3 or 4, maybe. Yeah. That would be a good— Really? Yeah. I was thinking, you know, like 10. No. 15. Forever. And then you got to analyze the results. Yeah, exactly. No, no, no, no. Like the thing is, did an HEI course a while ago, and it says, "Let's put these, you know, those 3 people." Really? Yeah. And that was fine. Then you can do a massive amount of analysis on 3 people. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. How can we get a range of people if you have 3? Yeah. One computer scientist. One. One art student. And one dude off the street. Yeah, one supposed to be woman, one to be a man, and one— Physical man. Yeah. Maybe we should just have 2. My bad one. Oh, dear. But yeah, if he finds them, then that's cool. If he finds the people. Another thing: we have the— we have the presentation on, like, in 1 and a half weeks or something, whatever it is. Yeah. Or nearly 2 weeks. Yeah, it's 2 studies. Oh, it's 2. Yeah, it's 2 weeks then. Yeah. Okay. Do we have to have done the evaluation by then? Yeah. I think so. I thought evaluation maybe for the report. And that's during the 25th. 25th is. Oh, right. Is that the Friday? That's what I understood. That's the Thursday. That's the Thursday. That's 24th. Yeah, it's the Thursday. So it's not the— I thought you said 25th. Even though it's Good Friday, I thought. Yeah. It's not Good Friday. Yeah, it's Good Friday. Oh, yeah. Easter too. Wow. It's not a Good Friday. No. No. Well, it wasn't originally either, so. Well, I'm sure on the website it says Thursday. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Please leave me a space at the bottom on this one. Oh, right. At the top. He's standing on a chair. Well, since you guys have chosen the ones I wanted to do. Okay. That's like a dog and chicken. And also, my drawing skill isn't that great. Well, as you can see, the quality of the work today is— I think it's outstandingly good. Okay, now I'm going to have to change what it was originally going to be, because that looks like a beak. I'll say, "Crocodile." But yeah, it can be a crocodile. It can be a crocodile. But it was in a— Firstly, it was an attempt at a T-Rex, and then it sort of changed into a pelican, but it can be a crocodile. That's lovely. Yeah. And I'll have to think on the spot of things that it is. Scary. Strong. Yeah, that's about it. I think. That's okay. I'm very impressed with your artistic skills, and I'm just delighted with what kind of art you're talking about. I'll hold it on. Hi, dear. What happened there? Technical help. Hopefully that'll stay on. Two-handed brush. Okay. Again, this is off the top of my head. I was going to do a big cut too. It doesn't look like what I want it to be. It's not a vampire bat, honestly. Somewhere there's a body behind. Okay. My dreadful, that's the worst yet. It's meant to be an eagle. Right. Not a seagull. Could have been a seagull. I had a thought of a seagull. An eagle. Again, I'm thinking on my feet. Goodness. Oh, they're also independent. I'll put that one down again. They're good at golf. Independent. Independent. Did you say they're good at golf? Yeah. Are they? Eagle. An eagle. Oh, right. I'm not good at golf. I'll say they're quite free. Which can fit into your hands and— No, that's good for a marketing point of view. It would be fun. The fun shape. Yeah, and colors also. You say that won't add too much to the budget to— No, no, no. The shape is— I don't think it will be. Like you can have, you know, for if you want that to be more— It just builds more basically. Yeah, yeah. It's just the shape, so it doesn't matter. Is the budget you're looking at if you build one mold? I don't think that's going to make a big difference whether it's going to be square or— Do you think there's any chance of having basically the same machine with the same buttons, but maybe several different shapes? Yeah, that is also possible. Because I can revise. Because that might help with the marketing. I think we will have to look at the budget on that, but I think in principle that would be kind of fun. Because we had something sort of sexy for adults, and we could have something sort of— Silly for children. Silly for children. Like an animal shape. Or a little elephant, so they can remember where it is. Yeah. And the buttons also, I think, if you want to have more features in your remote controller, then there should be more buttons. If there are more buttons, then it will be more complicated. If you have less features, then your remote controller won't be attractive. So I think we need to make some buttons which are like intended for 2 or 3 operations. Like if you press one button in one mode, then it will change the channel. If you press the other button in another mode, it will change the color. So if you want to have less buttons, we can have that option, but I think it will complicate the matter more, I think. I think that that's something that we'll have to discuss. With the user interface person. Because I think there's a lot of argument to be made for one button for one feature. Because I think one of the things people were complaining about, and when I found out in my research, is when they complained about how hard it is to learn a new one. The changing modes was something— Yeah, it's like you're— I mean, you and I all four of us, we work with computers all the time. Changing modes is nothing for us. But people who— Yeah, a little elderly, a little arthritic hand, you know, and it's a small button, and they don't press it exactly, you know, something else happens. Not their favorite channel comes up, but something else, and they're very frustrated. And it's the kind of thing people learn by feel. And— Yeah, yeah. You don't— You don't feel the mode change. So maybe having buttons be various shapes might be a help too. Yeah, shapes also differentiate. You know, like the triangle is for the volume, and a square is for changing channels. So that people can develop a tactile sense of it. But we'll get to that with you. Yeah. And also text should be very clear so that there won't be any ambiguity. That's right. Yeah. No, that's a good point. Yeah. And display clock. If you want more features, then we can display a clock. I don't think it will take any money, extra money, because anyway we have an integrated circuit, I think we can just definitely fit that feature into the circuit. Yeah, that's a good one. Because the clock could be really friendly. When is your favorite show coming on? Armands from the marketing point of view. And obviously our starting point with marketing is always market research. So that's where we started. We used our usability lab, a company's usability lab. We did our usual selection methods to get a cross-section of the general public, male and female, all age groups from 15 upwards. And we observed them in the lab, just their general use of the remote control. You can see we had 100 subjects there. Our findings, lots of findings, I've just summarized some of them here. The overall thing, which I've got at the top there in italics, is that users dislike the look and feel of current remote control. So that has obvious design implications there. We found that 75% of users find most remote controls ugly. 80% would spend more money when a remote control would look fancy. We were quite surprised by that finding, but that's quite a high proportion of our international target group, are prepared to spend more money for something that's a bit nicer looking. Current remote controls do not match well with the operating behavior of the user overall. For example, you can see below there, 75% of users zap a lot. So you've got your person sunk back in the sofa, channel hopping. So again, there's power implications there. 50% of users only use 10% of the buttons. So again, a big design issue there. And possibly we can also cut back on cost if we don't have so many functions actually on the remote control. The biggest frustrations that people found with regard to personal preferences were something that you mentioned earlier. Remote controls are often lost in the room. It's the slipping down the back of the sofa type of thing. 50% were particularly frustrated by that. 34% of people said they take too much time to learn to use and I think that ties in with the previous finding of people only using 10% of the buttons. They just can't be bothered to learn about the other functions. Slightly more than a quarter of people said it was bad for repetitive strain injury. You know, those small movements of the remote control can lead to kind of shoulder and elbow problems. The vast majority of the 35 and under age group would like a liquid crystal display. And speech recognition. Again, that was to aid, I think, in when they've lost the actual remote control. Some kind of speech recognition. Something we didn't put to them, but which I'm thinking of now, is even if perhaps the lost control can give off a bleep every now and again until you find it or a flashing light. Possibly. That trend reverses in the older age groups. So 35 and unders who would like those two features. That kind of evens out 35 to 45. And in the older age group, it kind of reverses. They're not so bothered with this. I had marvelous tables and things that I could thought on the issue. She would like special case made out of plastic. That is very strong. Not using any harmful materials. Should be recyclable. And should be colorful. Should have an integrated circuit board that's highly sophisticated and temperature resistant. She would like to see a timer and/or alarm facility integrated. Technically, this thing would also have a resistor and a capacitator. Diode, transistor, resonator. And if possible, a rechargeable battery. And of course, a circuit board. And how it would work. You press the button, the chip is more code related, relays the to the general to the generator amplification. And the circuit board is very inexpensive to build. And so she thinks this is a great feature. To consider she would like this whole thing should be push buttons with a simple chip. Scrolling method is more expensive and not that practical anymore. Should be battery operated. And of course, should have the special cases. The marketing expert who has to finally come up with to market this product has been watching the competition. Has done some research on the internet. And also has used her personal observations to come up with the fact that such a remote should be small, easy to use, and it should be eye-catching. From her point of view, of course, one of the most important facts is that we should get to market before our competition does. To do that, maybe one or two features should be developed on which we could dwell on. Or in other words, on which our campaign could be built on. Too many new features or too many points would only confuse matter. So we prefer to have one or two features that can be really driven home. It should have a fruit and vegetable design and should have a soft feel. She feels that's really what people want today. The decision that we took last time was that the special feature we would like to see is a speech recognizer. The energy should be battery. Should be on a chip. Should be trendy design. Compact and strong. Used about 10% of the buttons on a remote control. And 50% of the people indicated that the remote tended to get lost in their room. So some things. Then we did some research to the most relevant functions. Channel selection and volume selection both got a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 for relevancy. The power button got a 9. And Teletext got a 6 and a half. So these are the most important functions of a remote control. Then there are some one-time use functions. That's what I like to call them. They're the audio settings, video settings, and channel settings buttons. Which are not really used very frequently. But are still considered to be of some importance. Channel selection was also indicated to be used very frequently. 168 times per hour. Then these are the this is the market. 60% of the market consists of users between the ages 16 and 46. The main characteristic of this group is that they're very critical on the remote control. They like to use new functions. But they also are very critical. They won't spend their money very easily. So the users of 46 to 65 years they make up 40% of the market. They're not really very interested in features. But they do tend to spend their money a lot easier. What I think this indicates for our design. I think we should make a remote for the future. And this means we would have to focus on the ages 16 to 45. This also makes up most the biggest part of the market. So that would also be where our main profit would be. Getable. This would mean we would have to make a fancy design. The results also indicated that about one quarter of the people questioned thought that the remote control caused errors eye. This is certainly something to take into account. And 34% thought that it was hard to learn how to operate a new control, remote control. So these are two factors that I think should be included in the design. Besides, of course, that the remote must look very nice. Functionality. As a lot of people indicated, they only use about 10% of the buttons. I think we should make very few buttons. This will also be beneficial to