Development Of The TiVo Remote Charted

victor_the_cleaner writes "The New York Times (anonymous readers need not apply) has an article about the development of the TiVo remote control. The article reviews the user-centered design approach the designers took. According to the lead designer, they considered 'how it feels in the hand, for long periods of time.' How about you - do you have an emotional attachment to your TiVo remote? Or other well-designed objects?"

Comments

do you have an emotional attachment to your...

[warrior]

...TiVo remote? Or other well-designed objects?

Yes, my second generation iPod :)

Cheers,
Mike

Depends which one you have..

[James_G]

I have two Tivos (Series 1). A Sony model and a Philips model. I can't stand the Philips remote. but the Sony remote completely rules. All the commonly used stuff is grouped together. You rarely need to stray beyond the central buttons.

Another problem with the Philips remote is that it feels the same upside down, making it hard to tell which way you're holding it in the dark. With the Sony remote, I can do everything without even glancing at the thing.

On the whole, the Sony remote is among the best remotes I've ever used for anything. No extraneous buttons (you use basically everything), but the frequently used stuff is intelligently placed.

Open source software needs UI designers!

[ratsnapple tea]

"They were designed by - and I hate to say it because I am one of them - engineers," Mr. Newby said.

Mr. Nielsen said: "... They're overloaded with features you don't really need except once a year or once a lifetime."

Honestly, folks. He might as well be talking about Linux distros, or open source software generally. In my experience, open source UIs are just plain terrible from a user perspective (though perhaps not from an engineer's).

How is free/open source software ever going to replace anything on the desktop if the people who are attracted to these projects are almost exclusively engineers and programmers? The art of UI design is very different from the art of programming, and I think the open source "community," such as it is, needs to be more aware of the need for skilled UI designers.

How to get UI people to join open source projects, however, is a mystery to me. Any ideas?

yours

A candidate for worst inmate: Alarm Clocks

[ianscot]

I recommend that people interested in this sort of thing read Alan Cooper's The Inmates Are Running the Asylum.

One of the best examples from that Alan Cooper book is alarm clocks.

That's also a perfect example of dysfunctional relationships between user design and the engineer. There are alarm clocks that project the time on the wall or ceiling, alarm clocks that (supposedly) lull me to sleep with white noise or "nature sounds," and alarm clocks that wake me with my favorite CD -- but every blinking last one of them has horrible user design, especially for the intended audience: sleepy, disoriented people who don't have their contacts in. It's pretty amazing to consider just how awkward the things are.

The guts of a better alarm clock: Bigger buttons that are clearly differentiated, even without my glasses on. Decent control over my snooze-ing -- limits on number of times, variable length, etc. would be nice. Readable displays that show different information -- ta dum! -- differently. ("Alarm" is not the same as "PM" and should not be an identical dot on the display.) And so on.

Everyone has one of these, but the business hasn't produced a really good alarm clock at the commodity level for Target to carry. Designers with swooshy plastic cases aren't going to fix the problem by themselves.