A: Okay ?
A: Good afternoon .
A: Hope you have good lunch .
C: Afternoon .
B: Hi .
C: Yeah ,
C: we had falafel .
A: Oh . Nice .
A: And you ?
B: Uh , yes , I had something similar but non-vegetarian .
A: A: Okay .
A: So today is um our third meeting .
A: It will be about the conceptual design uh .
A: If I come back to uh the minutes of the last meetings
A: um . We decided not to go for speech recognition technologies because of some reasons
A: and we are not decided about u the use of L_C_D_ screen on on the remote control because of costs .
A: So maybe we cou wi will be able to clarify this this question to today .
A: Uh at the end of the meeting we should take decision on that point .
A: So I hope uh that your respective pr presentations uh will help us .
A: So each of you have some presentatio presentation to perform
A: um who starts ?
D: Okay , .
A: So marketing .
D:  C: A: So you are A: you saved your y your presentation somewhere ?
D: Yep .
A: So you're four ?
D: Four , yeah .
A: Which is trend watch .
A: Okay .
A: Mr Marketing Experts .
D: Yeah that's me .
A: So  D: Uh . Well I investigate the preference more d
D: I investigate deeper the preference of the users .
D: Uh so the the current investigation th uh th uh
D: sorry
D: the current
D: the n
D: current trends ?
B: Yeah .
D: Yeah ?
A: Mm-hmm .
D: Okay .
D:  Okay . D: Well wha what I found D: um can you A: Next slide ?
D: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
D: Thank you .
D: What I found in order of importance from less to more important is that people want an easy to use device .
D: After they they want something new technologic technologically speaking ,
D: but the most D: what they what they find more more interesting , more or more important it's uh a fancy look and feel instead of uh instead of the current the current trend which was f the functional look and feel .
C: D: So now more more cool aspect , ma more a cooler aspect uh rather than a device with many functions and many buttons with D: instead of i instead of ha of a device which can do many things , a device which is pleasant to to watch , to see .
A: Okay .
D: Uh also D: Well in in Euro in in Paris and and Milan the  B: C: D: in Paris and in Paris and Milan the the current trend of uh of clothes , furniture and all this
D: all this fashion it's it's fruit and the the the theme is fruit and vegetables .
B: A: Mm .
D: And also in the in the U_S_A_ the the current the mor the most popular feeling it's it's a spongy .
D: Spongy means eponge ?
C: Mm-hmm .
D: So maybe we should we should think in in this direction , so B: What what do you mean by fruit and vegetables and spongy ?
D: B: What you mean clothe
C: Spongy means it it's like sp
D: Fruit vegetables is the the new D: have you seen the last exposition of clothes in Milan ?
B: No , I missed that one .
D: Yeah , I I didn't miss an B: A: C: D: I didn't miss and I saw that the fruit , there are many fr pictures of fruits and vegetables in the clothes .
B: Oh , they're okay so they're not like dressed as a carrot
B: they just have like pictures of fruit on , okay .
D: No no , not not yet , not yet .
A: D: Yeah , yeah .
B: So we're not gonna have a remote control in the shape of of a banana ,
D: So te textu textures , yeah .
B: just maybe D: Yeah .
B: D: Vegetable textures and all this kind .
A: Drawings of bananas .
C: B: D: Uh B: Okay and  A: Uh-huh .
D: yeah , yeah .
C: But what's your suggestion how we can have some shape like that on the remote ?
A: Well so this is in the next slide certainly .
D: Uh no no , it's not .
A: It's not ? D: It's  B: B: So which fruit are you thinking of ?
D: And D: Um .
A: C: D: I ha I haven't thought of any particular fruit ,
D: but the general aspect of the of the remote control may may could remind some kind of vegetable ,
D: some kind of
D: instead of vegetable , some natur mm uh natural object or something .
C: Mm-hmm .
D: But yeah it it depends on the A: So maybe you maybe you can display a banana on the L_C_D_ .
B: Oh , so you want the remote control to be the shape of a fruit ,
A: A:  B: or you want just some kind of like fruit logo on the  C: Means buttons are in the shape of fruits ,
D: Yeah maybe the shape the shape C: buttons are in the frape shape of fruits or something , apple , banana , something like that .
D: No , not n not not too much focus , not too much focu not n not too s not too similar to a fruit because next year the ten the trend the trend will be different .
A: Apple for channel one . C: C: Mm-hmm .
C: Mm-hmm .
D: So we shouldn't be at re really attached
D: to to the trend
B: So something that looks half like a fruit and half like an elephant . D: but D: For instance , yeah .
D: African or as an elephant ?
C: That we can discuss afterwards .
D: A: Okay .
B: But okay ,
B: I'm not , I'm not really sure if uh that would really appeal to everyone though ,
B: maybe just to fashion gurus ,
B: like maybe just like a little bit n a little fruit picture somewhere in the corner ,
B: but I don't know about
B: uh I dunno how ergonomic a , an orange is .
D: Well ma maybe we we should further specify what target are we focusing .
D: I think in my opinion we should focus on on young people
D: because they are more open to new devi new devices
B: To fruit ?
D: and also yeah according to the marketing report ninety p ninety five percent of young people was
D: was was able to
D: to buy a a n a cooler remote control .
B: But is it uh is fruit cool ?
D: What ?
A: That's a question .
D: What ?
B: Is fruit cool ?
D: Yeah ?
D: Uh D: Is the new trend
D: of the B: Well I guess , you know , Apple has the iPod so ,
B: imagi D: B: just 'cause they have an apple on their
B: on their product , doesn't mean fruit is cool . D: No I think we we should think about a a shape with it D: a device with a shape of some B: Okay , but it has to be easy to uh to use though and to hold you know ,
B: you don't wanna pear or a watermelon . D: Yeah .
D: Don don't you think we can find uh the shape of a fruit which is handy to use ?
B: Well , probably the only thing is a banana that I can think of ,
C: Banana .
B: a cucumber .
C: Mm-hmm .
B: I dunno .
D: Or m
A: Maybe too long .
B: Maybe .
B: Too green .
D: Maybe . A: B: So , but I mean you also have to you have to also have , fit r all the buttons and you know .
A: A banana .
D: Um B: It's , it D: Yeah .
B: The thing is you have t normally with um with buttons , they have to be at some point attached to a circuit board
B: so if you're gonna have things like on a cylindrical kind of device it may be difficult to kind of to build .
A:  C: I don't th
C: it will be rolling a lot .
D: Yeah but I li I like your idea that we shouldn't have a lot of buttons b buttons so
A: Okay .
A: Yeah
A: and you you you will not have pla enough a lot of place to put a L_C_D_ on a banana also .
B: Yeah .
D: Uh do you want a an L_C_D_ with twenty five Euros ? A: Well , you're the Marketing Expert you should tell us if it is too much or not .
B: Well , this is D: I think D: Well , according to the to the report people are more interested in in a fa fancy look and feel and in a technological inno in innovation ,
A: D: so , I will give more importance to the look and feel than rather than the
A: So A: So you you you suggest to go f
D: new inputs
D: and also it's I'm not convinced about this L_C_D_
D: because you need uh internet connection , you need more things ,
D: it's not just buying a new control re remote , you need buying control remote , buying uh
A: Okay .
A: S so you're simply
D: more things .
D: It's not so simple .
A: you're simply looking s to a remote control that looks like a banana with few buttons with only a few buttons .
D: For instance , yeah .
D: Yeah for for for given an an example yeah . A: Okay good .
A: So maybe you can go ahead ?
D: Yeah no , it's what I already said .
A: Okay . A: Thanks . Um .
A: Okay , I'll give the floor .
A: So you are User Interface guy .
B: Okay .
A: So you're three ?
B: Yeah .
A: And it's this one .
B: Yep .
A: Go for it .
B: Yep .
B: Okay . So .
B: S next uh slide .
B: Okay . So I received an email um around lunchtime letting me know that the brilliant minds at our technology division had developed an integrated programmable sample sensor sample speaker unit ,
B: um which is a way for you to have a conversation with your coffee machine and or remote control .
C: But it's just a speaker right ?
B: It's B: no ,
B: what it is , it's it's very C: It's not a microphone .
B: It has a has a microphone ,
B: has a speaker , it's got a little chip
B: and it allows you t
C: Mm-hmm .
C: Actually I'm not reading microphone there ,
C: so that's why you can all have conversation , it just to speak to you .
B: Well , it's a sample sensor sample speaker .
B: Sample sensor sample speaker .
B: It means that it can recognize , it can do like a match on a on a certain phrase that you speak and then can play back a phrase in response to that .
C: Mm-hmm .
C: Mm-hmm .
C: Mm-hmm .
C: Mm-hmm , mm-hmm .
B: But uh there's no kind of um understanding of the phrase .
C: Okay .
B: So , I mean , you know ,
B: I guess you could build that in , you could you could link the the recognition of a certain phrase to some function on on the remote control .
C: Mm-hmm , mm-hmm , mm-hmm .
B: But basically the thing is , we have this technology available
C: In-house .
B: in-house .
B: So , um
C: Mm-hmm .
B: but the thing is obviously there's still gonna be a cost if you decided to integrate that because you still have to pay for the c production of the components ,
C: Mm-hmm , mm-hmm .
B: so um it it B: but it basically means we c we can kind of consider this from uh you know uh a theoretical or usability kind of viewpoint without worrying too much about you know how to develop it because we have this already done .
C: Mm-hmm , mm-hmm .
B: Whilst you know , some people might get annoyed if we uh if we just dump it ,  A: I A: there's something that I unclear really understanding .
A: Is this a technology that recognize keywords speech keywords ?
B: It's it it's no , well ,
B: it's it'll recognize uh I guess keywords , but you know keywords in a certain order like a phrase .
B: You train it for a certain uh , for a certain phrase ,
B: you say B: the the example they said that they have uh up and running with their prototype is um B: well they've actually integrated into the into the the coffee machine that uh that we're producing is ,
B: you can say good morning to the coffee machine and it can recognize that phrase and it'll playback good morning , how would you like your coffee ?
A: And it's just to , it's just to playback something ?
B: Yeah .
B: So actually that was a bad example ,
B: 'cause it doesn't actually ask how do you want your coffee because it can't really understand the response , so .
A: Yeah yeah .
A: So this is not s really to do to to do control .
B: Only , like , only in the sense that it it can recognize a set a set target kind of word an
A: Yeah .
A: This is just more like a poi pois yeah .
B: It's designed it's designed as a fun kind of thing ,
A: Yeah yeah .
B: but I guess you could use it as uh as a way to implement uh A: So it it's c uh it it
D: Yeah but you can u
A: it is a uh uh easy uh a fancy thing that you you can bring to we can bring to the remote control that will not have any uh
B: Completely pointless yeah .
A: yeah comp completely pointless for the inter for from the interaction point of v point of view .
B: Yeah .
B: Yeah , unless you know , you like having conversation with your remote control .
A: Okay .
D: Yeah but the can we use it for saying okay , channel fifty , channel twenty ?
B: B: Well yeah , that's the thing ,
B: if B: you can but you have to pro though I think it's a fairly simple design so you would have to record into the device every possible combination ,
B: you have to s tr train it to l to learn channel fifteen , that whole thing ,
B: not just the word channel and the word fifteen , it doesn't have that kind of logic in it .
A: Yeah yeah .
A: So this is so this is this is much more than tak taking this technology , bringing it to the remote control and using it .
C: Mm-hmm .
B: So B: Yeah , that would be some development work .
A: So this is out of discussion .
B: Yeah .
A: So if if if it is something that you can we can bring easily and to put it into the banana remote control D: M Mando .
B: Banana-mando .
A: No this is mm banana-bando , yeah .
D: Banana-mando yeah .
B: Banana-man A: Uh then it could be cool yeah .
D: A: B: C: Yeah okay ,
C: let's go ahead .
A: Okay .
B: I uh I I I don't think it's worth it though ,
B: I think it doesn't really add much to the functional design and it's it's it's not mature enough to use as a speech recognition engine , so A: Okay .
B: Um , yeah .
B: So if we can just move on to the next slide ,
B: I've just done a quick mock-up of uh uh some of the features of our potential funky-looking uh remote control D: A: It doesn't look like a banana at all .
B: Well , you see , I was I was unaware at this point of th of the fruit focus ,
A: Yeah .
B: um , so at the moment it's more of a box focus .
D: Looks like a tr look likes a a tro a tropical fruit .
A: But you you can fit i you're saying now you can fit it to B: Yeah , well , this is actu this could be a genetically engineered fruit that's designed to be you know square so that it packs tighter in the boxes .
A: Yeah .
D: Yeah .
D: B: But um , I've just indicated here , we could have actually two scroll wheels ,
B: 'cause I think the scroll wheel is a fairly um key part of , you know ,
C: Stable thing , that's right . To have ,
B: I think everyone has has agreed that it's that it could be quite a useful um thing , so .
C: mm-hmm , mm-hmm .
B: But I think it's important , you know , to have two scroll wheels because , you know , you want one for for the channel , but you also want one for for the volume ,
A: Mm .
B: because it's it's the volume i it's , you know it's very handy for it to have uh instant kind of uh feedback uh and response , so .
C: Mm-hmm , mm-hmm .
B: But um ,
B: I've also included this turbo button
B: because I think , you know , every design should have a turbo button ,
D: What's a turbo button ?
B: and well B: so this is you know , a unique problem with with televisions is that if you have this scro this scroll wheel for the television , the uh the tuner on the T_V_ is not gonna be able to to switch between stations as fast as you can scroll ,
B: so you know , the th the person might want to have a uh B: Might want to be able to scroll past television stations without seeing what's on them ,
B: in which case it just waits until you stop scrolling and then , you know , displays that station .
B: Or they might want to scroll and and have a quick glimpse of it , even if it lags behind what they're doing .
D: It con it controls the speed ?
B: Yeah ,
B: so with this turbo button you can , say , skip over t channels if uh , you know , if I'm if I'm going if I'm scrolling past them
B: and you know , it's um , you could have a little red light that comes up when they press it so they feel you know it's really going fast or whatever .
A:  B: So yeah , that's um ,
B: those are the two important uh features I think we need on the remote ,
C: Mm-hmm .
B: but I mean we can discuss about what other kind of buttons we need , um .
B: You know , i it could be , you know , if we if we wanna have like a very cheap kind of device ,
B: I mean , we could either consider that maybe we want to sell this as a very , if it's gonna be a banana , you know that's a pretty gimmicky kind of thing that doesn't have that much functionality ,
B: it's just you know a couple of scroll wheels and a button cause it's hard to get so many buttons on a banana
A: It's enough .
B: and it's still very B: it may even be for most for some people more functional than their current remote , but if they have these scroll wheels ,
B: so , um you know , what other buttons do we want ?
C: Mm-hmm .
B: I mean we could have B: well , I guess you need an on and off switch ,
A: Switch on . Yeah .
B: but you could you could o you could turn it turn it on by taking the top off the banana maybe , you know ,
B: it's kind of like a spy kind of flick thing .
D: Yeah .
D: So sounds crazy .
D: I like crazy ideas .
B: That's why you're a marketing guru . C: A: Okay .
D: Yeah , of course . A: So i it looks like we're going completely to forget about the L_C_D_ thing .
B: Well , that's the thing ,
B: as B: have we decided that we can only spend , uh , twenty five Euro ?
A: I think that B: Well not spend , but you know , charge twenty five Euro .
D: I I think we could use somehow the s coffee machine dialogue interface or so .
A: No we can we can't use that .
D: You D: we can ? We can't .
A: We can't use that to
C: Communicate .
A: to comman co communicate ,
A: it's just a thing D: Yeah , but we can say channel twenty five .
C: It's one way .
A: No .
D: No ?
B: But then you have to have a template for every channel , for a hundred channels ,
B: you have to be able to to recognize D: It's not a lot one hundred templates ,
C: Mm-hmm .
B: Mm .
D: it's not B: Well , I f I think it's probably more than , than our can handle because it's designed for a coffee machine , you know , to say hello in the morning .
A: Yeah .
D: Ah , it's designed for a cof okay .
D: Is it design for a coffee machine ?
B: Well that's its current application ,
B: I would presume that it's kind of , they wouldn't design it to handle a hundred things th so .
D: Okay .
D: Yeah .