User Interface: That I would believe .
Industrial Designer: about Marketing: Mm-hmm .
Project Manager: Mm .
User Interface: Industrial Designer: But um yeah I think we we need to compromise between those two and somehow we'll do that . Somehow . Um so the the what I would propose is something more or less in the uh direction of what is to yo the right of that slide uh but without with a l a less complicated um design , so the numbers , the volume control , and channel control , and teletext access . Uh the volume and channel control can just become those the the four button array as in if it was a round dial .
User Interface: Mm-hmm .
Industrial Designer: And um if you just think about it as the one to the right but with the numbers and the four buttons plus maybe a centre one with teletext .
Project Manager: So we're suggesting doing a sorta scroll wheel thing for the volume ?
Industrial Designer: Ye no it's not
User Interface: That's not a scroll wheel .
Industrial Designer: i i it's just four buttons that are on a cross ,
Project Manager: Nah . Oh okay okay . I see .
Industrial Designer: so that you ba basically can control all of the important tasks from that alone .
User Interface: Right .
Project Manager: Uh , okay .
User Interface: Instead of play , stop , rewind , and fast forward there , that's up , down , louder , and quieter .
Project Manager: Okay .
Industrial Designer: Yeah um yeah so I think we w we go for something mid-sized , so something looks good
Marketing: Industrial Designer: and uh is not too prone to get lost . That be it .
Project Manager: 'Kay . So on to Y functional requirements or trend watching ?
Marketing: I dunno .
User Interface: Trend watching has a later date there .
Marketing: Trend watching I guess . Trend watching I believe .
Project Manager: forty six nineteen fifty seven . Yep .
Marketing: See what it looks like . It's been so long .
Project Manager: Industrial Designer:  .
Marketing: Well I don't know what to say . When I s when I see the when I see the product I I I I don't wanna buy it . I see so many of 'em out there . There's nothing about that product that makes me wanna choose that product over other products that are out there .
User Interface: Are you talking about the picture ? That's not our that's not our b design ,
Marketing: Yeah yeah .
User Interface: that's just a that's just something he a a graphic he used to show you the layout of what the layout of the buttons might be like .
Marketing: Okay . Okay . Okay 'cause 'cause right now I don't have too much to say about how to market this product because we don't have a product to market yet .
Project Manager: Mm .
Marketing: And uh from from talking to Mike is that we have we have uh we can market a more expensive product now . That's what I understand so ,
Project Manager: Upper management said yes .
Marketing: hello .
Project Manager: Uh e excuse that , that's a bit of spam .
Marketing: And and so yeah I'm a I'm a little bit stuck right now in that what uh w what is it that I'm gonna market ? Uh without special or increased marketable features I don't believe the product has a consumer demand . Uh I like the idea of of the scroll makin there are so many people making these products at this price right now . What are we gonna do to make this one special and unique ?
User Interface: What's special and unique about a scroll ?
Marketing: Uh well I don't Project Manager: It's cool .
Marketing: yeah it's I I just see it as different . I don't say it's specially mm I don't say it's special . Uh I say that it's different I what I'm looking for as marketing is m give me something different . I give me a lower price , give me a higher price , give me some new technology , don't give me the same thing that everybody else is putting out there on the shelf it's f at the same price . I need something to market about this thing . We're we're a new firm .
Project Manager: I'd I'd say though that we if we did make the decision to go with the cradle though , the then we have that as well ,
Marketing: What i if when when we have Project Manager: but wi with a similar Marketing: yeah when we when we have something like the cradle or or something give that's as as a marketing standard I need something to market , to make this product unique .
User Interface: Well right I think the two big th points that we have so far are the having the cradle and also having uh the um the actual design of the uh case itself having like this like rubber shell maybe with a plastic interior ,
Marketing: Yep .
User Interface: having it look really nice um and also be really durable .
Marketing: Mm 'kay . Just remember when I made up this report I didn't have the information that we're discussing here .
Project Manager: Mm . Course .
User Interface: Right yeah . Yeah .
Marketing: And and so so uh yeah when we have a cradle , when we have some kind of design , so what I'm saying is , from my perspective , I don't have a product to market right now . Um uh my personal preference is that we make some adjustment in the cost , either lower or develop an integrated new technol technology . That's that is the next step , there's technology and then there is technology , which we're moving into the next phase .
Project Manager: Yeah 'cause that's .
Industrial Designer: Marketing: And so uh we're gonna have some new technology to enhance the marketability . Yeah uh again I'm not sold on the product because we don't have a product in my opinion yet .
Project Manager: Mm .
Marketing: So I need a product .
Project Manager: Mm 'kay .
User Interface: Well let's get a product then .
Marketing: I need a product to market . And I just whatever product you guys put together , we'll find a way to market it . Tha that I'm not concerned with .
Project Manager: So now Marketing: If you if you give me if you give me a cut-out of what everybody else has then I need to I need to find a lower cost .
Project Manager: So our big questions here really are cradle or not cradle ? Do we go basic or do we go for features ? Uh d does anyone really wanna do anything with the scroll wheel or should we ditch that off-hand first ?
User Interface: Well my question is what would the scroll wheel do ? Function-wise , what does that do that Project Manager: Oh but that was in your presentation so wh what would you imagine it doing ?
Marketing: Yeah wh wh what's the wh
User Interface: Yeah . Well it's it's just another way to do the exact same thing that the buttons do .
Project Manager: Mm 'kay
Industrial Designer: But would we Marketing: Okay now what I see with the scroll wheel is everybody has buttons . So from a marketing standpoint I have I have another door to walk through when we have something that's unique .
Project Manager: Yeah .
Marketing: If it creates something more complex or more expensive , then I don't know if that makes it uh a marketing necessity . But again , from a marketing perspective I want as much new and different about this thing as possible because we're we're co it's a very competitive market .
Project Manager: What I understand about scroll wheels is they're they're quite expensive to to make .
User Interface: Yeah .
Project Manager: So I d
User Interface: Th they are gonna be more expensive , but on the other hand , I mean , it I mean it is an alternative if if you think that's gonna sell some some uh you know if if we're gonna make up the extra cost by extra sales I think maybe it's worth it to do it , but I mean I would just use if I was gonna do this I would just use the scroll wheel for s channels up and channels down . I don't think volume or do you think volume would be Industrial Designer: I dunno . I'll bet first in volume maybe . I dunno .
User Interface: No we can we can do multiple scroll wheels but Project Manager: Well I d I like the idea of basically focusing the  my personal preference is focusing the p the product on the idea of the uh the case the the uh dock to put it in to to charge it . We can target like environmentally friendly ideas , that sorta things .
Marketing: Mm-hmm .
Project Manager: It s i m makes it easy to market ,
Marketing: Yeah yeah .
Project Manager: it's easy to differentiate the product , yeah so .
Marketing: I think it's that's right . I think so .
Project Manager: And if we we keep the rest in a format that is durable because th th the whole product's gonna need to be more durable th thus because you're not going to be ditching it as often .
User Interface: Mm-hmm .
Project Manager: It's gonna need to be more expensive because of the cradle .
Marketing: Mm .
Project Manager: So if we can market it in terms of that and yeah well Marketing: Yep . I think we got some exclusivity in that , you know , we got something that nobody else has right now ,
User Interface: Yeah .
Marketing: and and that means we can we can make some adjustments in the retail or wholesale price if we need to and it also can create it's own demand from it's uniqueness .
Project Manager: So our big decision then is like how do we do um like  we have to decide on the details and we have to decide on well n not exactly the details , but d do we have uh What type of casing ? I personally like what you were saying about the plastic with the rubber .
User Interface: Mm-hmm .
Project Manager: User Interface: I'm thinking yeah something like kinda almost like these pens , you know , where there's you have plastic bits and then it's not really rubber but just kinda like a fused the plastic with rubber on the outside .
Project Manager: Okay . Just a very thin sorta sheet for a a grip , sorta thing or for User Interface: Well no ma yeah maybe a bit more then th is on here but ju just as a kind of an inspiration , these pens I think are are kind of Project Manager: Okay . So then if we  d d do we want to do anything more basic with the uh more advanced with the user interface in terms of do we want to go for um buttons , or do we want if we're ditching the scroll wheels do we want to go L_C_D_ ? Do we want to give do we want to have anything else on it ?
Industrial Designer: It's only a T_V_ .
User Interface: Or from from my perspective I think L_C_D_ is a mistake because this is a universal remote and all you're doing I mean it's you're not gonna get any information back from the television , so the only information you can display on this remote is what channel you just sent it at last and there's just not a lot of information , you know , there .
Project Manager: Okay .
User Interface: It receives no information .
Industrial Designer: Hmm .
User Interface: So I I don't see any reason for having an L_C_D_ 'cause it's an increased cost . Unless you can think of something interesting to do with it .
Marketing: Yeah . Yeah right now there's right now there's nothing coming out of the T_V_ to receive , so you know unless technology changes and information starts coming out of the a cable box or something there's no s I don't see the ,
User Interface: Right .
Marketing: I don't see the necessity of an L_C_D_ either . Don't see it .
Project Manager: Okay so the question is now I guess we need t to decide on well y you guys basically have to now go and figure out the details of this thing .
Marketing: Project Manager: So , what we need to know in terms of marketing and uh project management are are there any other questions that we need to answer now before you guys can go and build this ?
Marketing: Project Manager: What what overall things have we not decided on ?
User Interface: Well we have to I think for me it's still not exactly clear exactly what the inter user interface is gonna be . There's the scroll wheel , in or out ? What do you guys like in the user interface ?
Project Manager: I think maybe in terms of marketing , is that gonna make enough of a difference to justify the cost ?
Marketing: Again . Well I think it's it's the more uniqueness you can bring to the product , the easier it is , I believe , for me to market . Uh again the push-buttons I I see are are everywhere . And so we can go with the same thing , but we're gonna be com competing in a in a broader market than if we go with something unique . You know the other thing I thought about was you know , do we go to something like this ? Make a remote that doesn't look like a remote . It's just another it's just a an idea , and I don't know User Interface: Well I dunno about like the flip-phone idea , because I think , as far as durability th it's not a big well maybe when it's closed .
Marketing: I mean what I see one of the things one of the things you brought up in an earlier presentation is , when you got children , their their stuff gets inside the circuitry , they get dirty , they get messy with drinks and stuff .
User Interface: Mm-hmm .
Marketing: This User Interface: Mm-hmm .
Marketing: And what I keep throwing out there I just keep throwing out ideas to try to make this thing look or act or in some way identify itself as unique or different .
Industrial Designer: Mm-hmm .
Marketing: But you guys are the ones that have to c ultimately create the product within cost .
Project Manager: Yeah and I guess th th the question th th that you're being asked right now is whether is the dock enough of a unique feature to be able to go out and sell that a a as a a very different product , or do we really need the scroll wheel as well ?
Marketing: Oh okay
Project Manager: Because the scroll wheel comes at quite a cost .
Marketing: phew .
User Interface: Yeah .
Marketing: I think you gotta g get into cost effectiveness . I think if you can have the base station with a with a locator , I think those are two very strong features ,
User Interface: Well Marketing: if that's something that can be integrated without a bunch of extra cost .
User Interface: The  The locator's gonna require a radio transmitter , which will Marketing: Mm-hmm .
Project Manager: That's gonna n is that gonna need a better chip as well ?
User Interface: Um we're probably gonna have to go with a like a medium chip , s I would imagine .
Industrial Designer: No it's just different .
User Interface: But we I we will need a receiver , an antenna .
Marketing: Integrated , yeah .
User Interface: Yeah .
Marketing: So it's just uh I I think that's User Interface: It should be a really simple signal though so Marketing: I know personally that would be a very attractive feature , is to have a uh have a button I can push to find my remote control .
Project Manager: And it's presumably gonna need a little speaker in it or something like that as well to beep .
User Interface: That's true yeah .
Project Manager: But I guess a little tiny speaker is gonna be quite cheap , it's not gonna need q quality , is it ? It's User Interface: Oh yeah yeah . It'll be really cheap .
Marketing: Or maybe you can like have a a smell-o-rama , you know you push a button and it s puts out a stink .
Project Manager: Marketing: You can  Industrial Designer: Maybe not Marketing: Project Manager: Makes your living room more fresh as you watch .
Marketing: Yeah yeah yeah yeah . Project Manager: Okay we're doing well for time here .
Industrial Designer: S
Project Manager: Um we've got about another ten minutes . I think that uh User Interface: So the scroll wheel , in or out ?
Project Manager: Mm pr my personal preference is out . I don't think the cost is justified for a little bit more uniqueness when we already have that , and I don't s think it's obvious and natural how it would be used .
Industrial Designer: Yeah . Yeah I think we have like and it's not very usable and it will bring down the robustness of the whole thing ,
Project Manager: Mm .
Industrial Designer: 'cause it's it it breaks down easier .
Marketing: Yeah .
User Interface: For me I think the scroll wheel actually might not be so bad .
Marketing: User Interface: I don't know exactly what the increased cost is gonna be , but I think he does have a point , i it might push somebody over the edge when they're looking at our at our remote versus something else , when they see this one has a scroll wheel to go up and down on the channels . I think it might be kinda neat to be able to do it like that .
Project Manager: But then that that surely d depends a little on the T_V_
Marketing: W
Project Manager: because some T_V_s are quite slow at changing channels from like so User Interface: Sure .
Project Manager: if you've got a scroll wheel and you s you have to scroll scroll it really really slowly just so that you're actually keeping in pace with the T_V_'s ability to to change channels . Or do you have to go through and you wait for it ?
Marketing: Yeah .
Project Manager: You scroll it a bunch of times and you wait for it to User Interface: Well I think wh what it would be is like like the m like this , where it's maybe you know a digital wheel , right , where it's where it's quantized into you know certain Project Manager: Mm .
Marketing: Oh yeah .
Project Manager: Uh I see I see . That's where you User Interface: That was that was my my intuition of what the scroll wheel would be .
Marketing: Yeah .
Project Manager: Ah I see I see what you're talking about now . Okay .
Marketing: User Interface: It's just it's basically it it's just a f look and feel thing . It has the same exact functionality as two buttons .
Marketing: I I think there's you know that uh there are so many people today that are that are surfing are television surfers , and I see the scroll as a as a great mechanism for surfing .
Project Manager: Yeah if you're just sitting there going  Marketing: Instead of going button-to-bu you just j you'd j j j j j j .
User Interface: Yeah .
Project Manager: That's kinda cool actually .
Marketing: I really I really think that's a really cool thing for surfing .
Project Manager: I like that .
User Interface: Now just just so you know though uh you did bring up a point which is very valid , is a lot of T_V_s won't re the T_V_s won't respond exactly the same . Some of them are gonna be kinda slow switching , so you may like queue up like fifteen channel changes , and it'll be like flip , flip , flip .
Marketing: Well there's ano
Project Manager: Well not n necessarily .
User Interface: But Project Manager: You could basically make it so that it'll I mean it's just gonna be sending a signal to the T_V_ yeah the T_V_'s ge so if you send about five flip channels , if you did that it's gonna flip once .
User Interface: Right .
Marketing: That's right .
Project Manager: If you do that .
User Interface: Yeah it just might be frustrating where you can't make it go as fast as you want ,
Project Manager: Other than click click click . Yeah .
User Interface: but I think once people get used to it I I do like the idea of the scroll wheel though .
Project Manager: And if we're marketing it as a high niche product , then we're gonna be selling it to people who are buying good T_V_s as well , yeah , presumably .
Industrial Designer: Mm-hmm .
Project Manager: Primarily .
User Interface: Marketing: Yeah I think so . I I think so .
Industrial Designer: Yep .
Marketing: Now the the only thing I I  on the interface side of it , is that I I I see the dilemma . But if we have the option of of scrolling at any particular speed , or the option of jumping direct , okay .
Project Manager: Mm-hmm .
Marketing: So I can go uh presuming I have , on my television , something that tells me what channel I'm on , I can scroll direct from channel five to channel thirty two . I know what because it's on the television . The television tells me what channel it's on when I change it . So I don't know that really that's that's gonna be a a d problem , 'cause the television can go automatically from channel five to channel thirty two with the push of a button . Okay ?
Project Manager: Mm-hmm .