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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?"
It is obvious what it is designed for and easy to use.
The TiVo folks really did a great job in the design of the remote, however I would have liked it a little smaller. It's kind of like the phasers in Star Trek TNG which went from being gun-like to being tamagotchi-like to the final TV remote shape. If TiVo could fit all that functionality into a tamagotchi sized remote, I would be the first one at the store to buy.
I have been pwned because my
Just my humble opinion... but the TiVo Peanut Remote is the best designed remote control ever made. It fits your hand perfectly, and all of the controls are easily reached with your thumb. The only problem is that it can't control your DVD player.
My fiancee got me this awesome programmable remote control. You know, with the touch sensitive lcd, learning functions (works with Bose stereos even!). That cleaned up 5 remotes off of our coffee table. The only remote I refuse to program into it is the Tivo remote. That thing is perfect. Accept no substitute. Every button is well placed, and easy to locate without looking. She understands...
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
This is a really cool project you might want to check out if you're interested in controlling the TiVo unit with a web browser rather than the standard remote control. i mean, sure the control is great and all, but i prefer a mouse :)
see here.
I have a strong attachment to my WASD layout for FPS games.
Often times at work I find my fingers relaxing into FPS stance.
What about badly designed objects? My comcast cable remote is horrible. To use the scroll buttons on the program guide (if it can be called such, half of it is ads) I need to contort my wrist. Why remote controls are still shaped like hotdog buns is beyond me. On some level, these designers must realize that an ideal situation would involve a more mouse-like remote. And please, lets start using RF instead of IR. I'm sick of pointing my remote. Yes I'm that lazy.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
As an interface designer I'm happy on both a professional and personal level to see user-centric design getting press lately. On the other hand I'm afraid that a lot of MBA-types will read articles like this and figure that they can just throw a designer at a problem and expect them to fix everything that's wrong with their product.
Real UI design will not fix fundamental flaws in a product. In fact a good designer will probably uncover problems that no one had noticed before. The reason that Tivo's interface is good is because the entire product was designed from the beginning around being easy to use. I'm willing to bet that there were designers involved in the product from the very beginning.
I recommend that people interested in this sort of thing read Alan Cooper's The Inmates Are Running the Asylum. It's a bit harsh on engineers and I don't buy Cooper's zealousness regarding his techniques but it has a lot of good insight into what can go wrong and how to avoid it.
I also really wish that the press could find a better poster child for our indutry than Nielsen, whose core competency is attention whoring and getting people to pay him thousands of dollars for speaking gigs [something he excels at]. He's got some pretty smart coworkers who have actually designed products that changed the way we interact with computers. Nielsen's crown jewel is a kooky Sun skunkworks project.
I'll go along with this one, I love my Logi mouse, with the caveat issue that you raise. I'm ambimousterous, but not fully ambidexterous. The Logi is a right hander period.
When taking hand written notes I have to use my right hand to write and left hand for the mouse. The best symetrical mouse I've ever used is the orginal Microsoft optical wheel mouse. It's 98% of the Logi, in either hand, so I can pass it back and forth with ease.
Speaking of writing, another favorite item of mine is my Parker matte black ballpoint pen. The traditional tapered shape (I can't stand the pencil straight barrel of a Cross), and a bit slender for long writing sessions, but something about its feel and finish hits me just right and I don't do long writing sessions anymore. That's why God invented typing.
Oxo kitchen tools. This stuff is truly the bee's knees. They're simply perfect. I've gotten rid of all my "classy" expensive kitchen stuff in favor of these "cheap" plastic tools.
With the exception of my traditional Japanese bamboo rice paddle. Sometimes the traditional tool is honed to perfection.
Snap-On combination wrenches. The Craftsman stuff is just as good, until you have to spend all day every day turning them. The Snap-Ons are caressable. The Craftsmans will leave your hands mildly abraded and sore.
Shimano bicycle brake levers. It took 100 years before someone got that one right. Go figure.
A replica of a 100 year old Adirondack hiking staff pattern made by the Poestenkill Hiking Staff company. They don't seem to have a web presence and for all know have been out of business for a long time. Mine is 20 years old. Simply perfect. In this case 100 years ago they knew a lot better than we do now. Perfectly shaped. Perfectly balanced. Perfect resilience.
KFG
The TiVo remote is indeed well-designed and more or less a joy to use. However, it seems to suffer a problem pandemic to all remotes: the eventual mysterious "buttons need ever-larger amounts of pressure to make electrical contact" problem. I tried taking it apart (which, of course, no remote is designed for), breaking the tiny points of the circuit board at the front. I washed the contacts anyway and put it back together, only to discover that the buttons now worked well, but the visible-light LED no longer worked. Sigh.
So I ordered a replacement from the TiVo website. Oddly expensive -- $35. Plus, only the translucent blue was available. On top of that, when it came, I discovered it was slightly different from the old remote in form and function. The immediate upshot was that it's slightly longer, which, having gotten used to the good layout so intuitively before, required a period of adjustment to the new positions without having to look or feel for it.
Anwyay. Anyone have a better method to cure (or prevent) that button-mashing problem?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
While I don't have many major qualms over the TiVo remote, one issue I always have with remotes are their physical properties. I own a few pieces of Bang & Olufsen kit, and they built their remote out of Zinc. So not only is the remote cool to the touch when you go to grab it, but it is heavier than a plastic remote as well. I even have it set up now to where I don't have to use my TiVo remote, I can use my Beo4 remote from Bang & Olufsen instead.
The original Palm PDA had similar origins. The creator of the Palm, Jeff Hawkins, carved a block of wood into a size that would comfortably fit into his shirt pocket, and using a "stylus" made from a whittled-down chopstick walked around Palm inc. for a month or two entering dates and phone numbers and taking the thing with him to meetings.
In my opinion, this is the way you should design any technology product; user experience first, technical stuff, code, and engineering later.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!