Sorry ? Okay , everybody all set to start the meeting ? Okay , we've got half an hour for this one  to  discuss the  functional design . project manager:  so hopefully you've all been working away , and I've put the minutes of the last meeting in the project folder .  kind of  got to know each other a little bit and  got familiar with all the equipment and started to discuss  a bit about the project , you know , cost-wise how much how much money we had to s  just want to tell you that you have three new requirements , which is the The first one is that   the company's decided that teletext is outdated  because of how popular the internet is . Nobody uses teletext very much anymore , so we don't really need to consider that in the functionality of the of the remote control . project manager:  they've also suggested that we  we only use the remote control to control the television , not the V_C_R_ , D_V_D_ or anything else . I think the worry is that if the project becomes too complex then it'll affect  how long it takes us to get it into into production , the time to market . So  , we're just gonna keep it simple and it'll just control the T_V_ . project manager: And the other thing was that the company want the corporate colour and slogan to be implemented in the new design . marketing: And the slogan , like the actual written slogan , or just to embody the idea of the slogan ? project manager: Well that's the thing , I'm I'm not sure   th because on the the company website ,  what does it say  something marketing: 'Bout putting the fashion in electronics . project manager: Yeah ,  do they Is that something they want actually written on it , 'cause it's quite long . So those are the three things , just not to worry about teletext ,  only control the T_V_ , and  and  incorporate the  colour and slogan of the company .  so is everybody okay with any of that , or do you want me to recap at all ? industrial designer: Nope , we're all set . user interface: Alright  , can I st steal this from the back of your laptop ?  project manager: Oh yeah , of course , yeah .  Right to do the  the design I have I've had a look online , I've had a look at the homepage , which has given us  some insp inspiration from previous products . user interface:  I've had a look at the previous products to see what they offer and  I would like to ask you guys for  your ideas about the design at the end of the meeting . user interface: having a look at the existing products , I found out that  it tends to come in sort of two extremes , there's either  a very complicated one that's got lots of buttons , lots of colours , very confusing , you don't know what you're doing . That one's perg and that one's prog , and it doesn't really tell you what it does . It's got only the basic functions  but  it's the same size as the the hard to use one .  so I believe the the advanced functions should maybe be hidden in a drawer , or something like tha from the bottom of it . marketing: M yeah , like a lot of a lot of what I've  read and prepared for this meeting fits in really closely with what with what Craig's just gone over . So in part I could I could give you some of my personal preferences but I could also th add some to this which is just about sort of  sort of market research . marketing: But anyway , project manager: Shall we sh well we'll stick to kind of your area for now . industrial designer: Which which is the clunky one , the one on left or on the right?. marketing:  clunky in what sense , like  h heavier ? Larger ? user interface:  I think it's supposed to be the same size , but  it's got much fewer buttons . It's , you know , it's very spread out marketing: I see , so it's more just basic .  like the one on the left looks quite  quite complicated , and that P_R_T_ p P_R_O_T_ thing is incredibly confusing .  so I see I see why yo you know you might prefer the simpler design , but yeah you don't want to lose out on , you know , what it does , so maybe you know marketing: project manager: you know you get a lot of remote controls where you kind of flip the thing open , industrial designer: project manager: I think that's a good idea . user interface: do we have any functions that  we'd want on it ? marketing: user interface:  so far I've got  on and off ,  switch the channel up and down , and put the volume up and down . user interface:  they're just the the very basics you could use for a T_V_ .  , you say that's a h a required one or a requested one ? Would you like marketing: Which was that ? user interface:  the channels like the the numbers on thing ,  marketing: Up the numbers , or the up down ? project manager: God , I wou I would say that's required , marketing: project manager:  there's no way anybody's gonna buy a remote control these days when if you can't actually individually select channels , marketing: Yeah . project manager: what else ,  So don't need to worry about teletext , marketing: project manager: don't need to worry about V_C_R_ ,  any kind of like display controls at all do you think we need to worry about , marketing: We don't ? No ? project manager: you know like brightness and contrast ? marketing: Yeah . Well I think I think es essentially what we're doing right now is we're categorising . We're saying well we want this to be a product that offers all the sort of more tricky features but we want them to be in another area ? project manager:  . marketing: We're kind of like sorting them an Or are we actually eliminating things we just don't want the product to have ? user interface:  project manager: I think are you are you maybe kind of thinking what we absolutely have to have and what would be nice ? user interface: to start with  sort of a bit both ,  we need to find out exactly what we have to have project manager: Well , do you wanna maybe just , at this point decide on what we absolutely must have as a p as a function of this . project manager: so so far , just to recap you've got volume and channel control and marketing: Yep . user interface: There's  on and off ,  volume and channel , and skip to certain channels with the numbers .  marketing: Well , one one way I would look at this  would be that we a approach the different controls in terms of  like control types , so that for the user it's very clear what they want to do where they go . marketing:  and also think maybe a little bit about sorta w w what would just wanna be acc easily accessible . project manager: Oka marketing: For example if we had audio controls , those could be something people set up very rarely . Maybe they're un they're they're they're in a little area but covered up  , project manager: marketing: things like channel and volume  are used all the time , so we just have them right out on top ,  very just very sort of self-explanatory .  so maybe we need to think about having three or more groupings of controls , you know like one which are just the the habitual ones that should be right within your natural grip . project manager:  well , just to to wrap up quickly on this this little section Have I just lost Oh no .  ,  do you think maybe that's the only kind of  essential requirements , and then maybe just things that would be nice if it could do would be things like audio set up and display set up and things like that , maybe like a mute button , that sort of thing . project manager:  okay , industrial designer: project manager: if we can move on to next presentation then please . project manager: Do you wanna user interface: Do you want to switch places ? marketing: Can this can this pl reach ? Can this plug come across ? industrial designer: No . marketing: Here , I'll just Why don't I just user interface: Just just switch them . marketing:  er , can you go up behind me ? Kinda This is so This project manager: bit complicated . It'd be nice if everything was wireless , wouldn't it ? marketing: I'm all in a knot now . So I can I can say already , I dunno whether this is for good or for bad but there'll be a lot of kind of  redundancy in the in the the issues and the the  the things . marketing: Which is ma not necessarily a bad thing , but may what I've already started doing is cr I created a slide in in my presentation here so  so that we kind of think well what's the cumulative effect of what we've taken from your ideas and and mine , because certainly I I have a hard time separating separating things completely . marketing: Obviously obviously what you've just told me what you've just told me impacts a lot on what  like market research  that that I've been project manager: Okay . marketing: So how do I how do I get this up ? industrial designer:  function F_ eight . Just  Before I bring this up what I'll just say is  what I've what I've done is tried to collect some information so that I can then relay this to to you guys so that it's now becomes a collective thing . And then kind of lead us in the direction of deciding , 'kay what what are our options , what should we decide and do you know what  , so . So  does that make sense ? So what I basically got is I just looked into some information and sort of th tried to think about how how we could review it and how we could and what kind of decisions we could take away from it and then maybe by the end of just looking at some of these things we can think about what are our priorities . So  I'm thinking here about  primarily about customer needs , that we start with the customer , and w you know , what they want and what are issues with with  existing products .  to think about trends and also about try and connect that as you see with the company vision which is about fashion in electronics .  and then , as I say  w we'd like to prioritise our design features from this and  project manager: industrial designer: Bouncing on top . marketing: So this is what I've found here ,  a lot of this is new to me , so we'll just read through together .  the vast majority would spend more money for it to look fancy as well , we'll see later , the vast majority would spend more money for  slightly more intuitive control , such as voice recognition . So I guess what we're looking at here is people want this h technology , they tend to use the most simple controls and overall they find remote controls to be something they don't doesn't really appeal to them . marketing: So I think what we're doing is we're trying to take like if for me this is sorta like three different different  inspirations , you know , one is that we want  something that's high-tech but we want it to seem easy . And in spite of the primitive side of it and the very high-tech side , we want it to just be an appealing piece of equipment in people's hands . This is  why I mention when Craig was  showing us some ideas that we actually try and group controls , so d it doesn't just look like a big panel , kinda like when you you look at , you know , a new computer keyboard , or something that is quite explanatory . industrial designer: Is installing a new remote control something that people marketing: no , that did not come up at all . And and again here as we sort of move m sort of thin start thinking about how we wanna sell and market this , I think a recurring theme here is the company wants it to be wants us to make something that's fashionable and sleek and trendy . marketing:  people  additionally aren't aren't liking the appearance of their products , so we wanna think about as we take all the sort of the techie features how we can  put that into a unit which is which people like . marketing: Yeah , so you know just c looking at what what Craig  Craig's i  ideas are s sorta tell me that maybe what we wanna do is try and  separate the different things that we wanna include in this . So if we do say well we want there to be all the technology will we try and make that almost be like optional technology . You know , it's like like I find a lot of T_V_s these days , something really like about 'em is if you wanna just turn 'em on and off you can , but they have little panels where you click and there's just like tons of features you go through . That's s that's sort of the  But I I'm my hope here is that I'm putting out this information so that we can then say okay , well how do we collectively move on with it . marketing:  I I haven't brought out one specific marketing idea , although my sense is that what we should try and think about is what are the current trends in materials and shapes and styles , and then use that . marketing: So Alright ? Any  comments on all of that ? project manager: Well ,  one of the things that we have to decide on by the end of the meeting is who we're gonna be  who's our our target audience , our target market . marketing: That's  project manager: so if we want something that that looks good and is easy to use , but has y is fairly powerful product , whatever , who do we really want to aim that at ? marketing: Yeah . Well i if if like twenty five Euro is our is our selling price then you can imagine , marketing: Yeah . project manager: well I don't I'm not really sure how much that will retail at . project manager: But you want it's somebody who's not gonna just use the remote that comes with their telly , I suppose , they're gonna actually go out and buy one . industrial designer: I think it'll be the mid range to the high end market , in terms of people . 'Cause twenty five Euros for a remote , how much is that lo locally in pounds ? project manager: It's about sixteen , seventeen pounds , I think . industrial designer: Is that too is that a lot of money to buy an extra remote or a replacement remote ? project manager: Yeah , marketing: industrial designer:  so maybe not the high end range , but maybe middle , middle up-ish . industrial designer: You know how much ? I dunno I guess you pay , what , ten ten quid for a remote ? project manager: Okay .  if you lost your remote and the first thing you just wanna go out and get , project manager: Yeah . industrial designer: would you how much would you pay ? marketing: This this kinda touches on your comments there , David . marketing: and these are this is a table of h what people would pay more for a certain feature . project manager: Okay marketing: Just gives us a rough idea of where the w the will to spend money on T_V_ equipment is . project manager: Yeah , so do you think we're we're aiming at a fairly young market then ? industrial designer: Yep . user interface:  project manager:  do you think then  voice recognition is something we should really seriously consider ? What what do you think , Craig ? user interface: Well , did you not say it was the the adults that were going for the the voice recognition ? Sort of the the older group . user interface:  f marketing: It does it does fit with the market that we're sort of identifying , project manager: N yeah . marketing: in terms of project manager: I think we are gonna have to narrow it down , to say let's target these people and give them what they want marketing: Okay . project manager: and 'cause you know , there needs to be some kind of selling point to it . project manager: Just kind of young professionals ,  th like if we are going to include speech recognition , it's kind of between fifteen and thirty five seems to be like a really high response to that . industrial designer: I I think twenty five to thirty five is is is fair to add that in as a group as well project manager: Yeah . industrial designer: because that's more than half your group of people who are willing to at least try and use your technology . project manager: You know , they have bit of expendable income to spend on this sort of thing . industrial designer: I think perhaps that age group is significant as well because those are people who use the computer , marketing: industrial designer: I think people who are maybe about I wouldn't say thirty five , marketing: industrial designer: but people who are about forty-ish and above now would not be so dependent and reliant on a computer or a mobile phone or something like that . industrial designer: So these are people who are gadgety , right ? project manager: So marketing: industrial designer: People who are u growing up used to , you know in schools and in universities , project manager: Yeah . industrial designer: when you go on to their working lives , people who would you know regular project manager: Yeah . project manager:  okay , so  industrial designer: project manager: so shall we make the decision  to include speech recognition marketing: If we can . industrial designer: I I think one thing we should try not to avoid is not to say we have to use speech recognition right now , project manager: if we can . industrial designer: because  , based on what you've go y everybody's saying , right , you want something simple . Why is that ? industrial designer: You want basic stuff and you want something that's easy to use . marketing: Could it be an on off thing ? industrial designer: marketing: Like if you want it on industrial designer: but what I'm saying is that we're we're trying to lock ourselves into a s particular kind of technology , project manager: Where you can activate it and deactivate it ? marketing: Yeah . industrial designer: rather than focusing on on exactly what are the features that we're gonna say , and then , you know , say speech recognition is good for this , speech recognition is not good for this . industrial designer: anyway it's a it's something that can be used to fulfil a function , but at end of the day we don't look at the technology , but we look at the function first . project manager:  might have been a good idea to all deliver our presentations and then discuss , but this is this is how we're marketing: Yeah , it's good well it's good to get ideas out while they're fresh in mind . marketing:  project manager: Oh it's something that's just occurred to me as well is if we make it  speech reco if we incorporate speech recognition , that's appealing to people  maybe with a physical disability as well . marketing: like we're kind of what we're b sort of getting in into here is mating different  design features together project manager: marketing: that they user interface: I reckon one problem with speech recognition is  I've actually seen one of them used and  the technology that was in that one wasn't particularly amazing , so you end up yelling at the control for hours . project manager: Do you think maybe we need like further advances in that kind of area until it's worthwhile incorporating it though ? user interface:  I think it'd probably quite expensive to put in .  I guess I try to define like what we're doing now , try to define what we're trying to get done . industrial designer: We've used it , we're familiar with it , but we're we can't n we haven't narrowed down  exactly what the things we're trying to fulfil , like Besides the basics , I think back in the back of our minds we know what the basics are . Has to change channels , has to change volume , but in like specifics , right , which one of the basics are you trying to target .  are there certain parts of the basics that are more important or less important than the basics ? marketing: industrial designer:  and I just the idea is just to get everybody to  I usually have a have have a design that's there as a basic , so , you know , things that to start everything going . But I guess everybody does have some idea , so I don't think  there's a need for that . industrial designer: from the basic technology point of view , the basic steps that you need  in the diagram and in this slide probably works better . industrial designer:  and that power source is important because it ties you down to  how long the device will last . That might be constrained because that you might need to power a microphone , you might need to power other things , so that's one perhaps constraint there .  Th Okay , the basic thing is there's a user interface where people punch a button or talk into it or smile to it or blink their eyes , whatever . industrial designer: You know , and that  picks up an input from a user ,   a logic a series of logic has to decide what the user is telling the device , and the device has to r you know , based on you push button A_ , so I will do something with button A_ . industrial designer:  and then it needs to be able to send the signal out to the device itself which is the receiver here . It's fairly general ,  and I guess the purpose of this is also not to restrict you in in the way you're thinking , project manager: industrial designer: like  voice recognition , right , if it's something which is important then we just add more power rather than having a thing that we don't have enough power . industrial designer: but  these are functionally , you know , the base , marketing: industrial designer: I think we should maybe you you wanna go back to what the functions are ? I think that's more relevant to a discussion ? project manager:  . project manager: Well , do you wan do you wanna finish up your your whole presentation then ? marketing: Sure . Ps Oh , it's just putting the rest of it into words , but it's essentially the same thing . marketing: And like on the means b industrial designer: I guess this would be marketing: Since we're on the topic of the technology ,  are there any like what are our options ? industrial designer: Yep . marketing: Alright , what's what i in Is this the only way that we go about it , or are there other thin industrial designer: these these aren't technology options in that sense . industrial designer: For example , if you needed  if you needed to add  a voice recognition , right , then your user interface would be split , project manager: industrial designer: but I think the basic functions are the logic , the transmitter ,  and the receiver , okay , project manager: industrial designer:  and those are things that based on what your user interface requires then we'll add more functionality to it . industrial designer:  there might be one other consideration which would be that the the transmission between the remote control and the T_V_ for example . industrial designer: Okay ,  are we gonna restrict ourselves to using the traditional technologies of infra-red thing ? project manager: Okay . project manager: Well well a worry that was was expressed in the new requirements was that if we made this too complex it would e it would effect  how long how long it took us to get this to market , so I th suspect it might be a good idea just to restrict our kind of our creative influence on this on the user interface and not worry so much about  how we transmit it industrial designer: Yep . project manager:  because  it it's tried and tested intra-red , so we could stay with tha industrial designer: There might be one other problem with the transmission ,  in particular right now , since we're talking about voice recognition .  if somebody's gonna h talk to the device , you ideally want them to hold it to them . industrial designer: it's something very natural , I guess , you know , to hold it , to signal to the user , project manager: Yeah , industrial designer: Then you need to send the signal out , so because if you're using infra-red , the line of sight  say the T_V_'s at that chair , and I'm standing in front of here and the transmitter is here , it blocks it . industrial designer: but it's something which you may have to think about later on in the process .  does c is our controller is it have the option of being  on a standard  frequency as all of the other equipment , so that the one controller can control several pieces of equipment ? industrial designer: There's there's not much specific specific information , project manager: W industrial designer: but I think that  one indication of infra-red mean that you're just targeting traditional devices . project manager: In the new requirement spec they said just to focus on the T_V_ , industrial designer: marketing: Just to T_V_ , okay . project manager: is it worth considering like having like a charging unit as opposed to just regular batteries ?  is that something we really want to go into , do you think , industrial designer: There's a there's project manager: or should we just consider running on regular batteries ? industrial designer: Okay , from from a from a component point of view there's added complexity , and you add cost to it , project manager: -huh . marketing: project manager: Okay , industrial designer:  and most users are very f use already used to the idea of buying batteries and putting it into the controller . industrial designer: But unless the controller's gonna consume a lot of batteries , like he's gonna run through like twenty batteries a month , project manager: Yeah . industrial designer: then I don't think rechargeable is something we should you know , we really need to care about . So basically the  I'm just gonna just recap  what I said at the start , was that  the the whole point of this meeting was to f absolutely finalise who we're gonna aim this at , industrial designer: project manager: and what exactly the product's gonna do . project manager: Are we all happy about the idea of  aiming the product at  the fifteen to thirty five bracket ?  and also the funct the the actual functions of what it's gonna do . project manager: user interface: I think we just say that it was gonna be the the most basic stuff possible . marketing: And is it going to include any of the  the more advanced features , or are we gonna eliminate those ? user interface:  I think we include mute , but apart from that  I think we just we'll go for the simpleness . R is it is it is it s is it not an option still that we include some things just as a sort of under like sort of under a door or some project manager: Yeah , it's as optional functions . marketing: 'Cause what what I'm I'd be a bit worried about is if someone was h had previously developed habits of expecting to control surround sound or this and that with their controller and then and then they , you know , w they get ours and w it's doesn't have that . industrial designer: Another thing that you were saying about categorising the controls ?  maybe I could suggest we we break them down into three simple categories . industrial designer:  this may not map very well to advanced functionality especially , but I think that  from a manufacturer's point of view , from a person designing the device , marketing: Yeah . industrial designer: but I think from a point of view of a person using the device , you know a T_V_ is something they see and something they hear , project manager: industrial designer:  it's something they do other things to like turn it on and turn it off .  like so what we could have is like three buckets , right , where we could throw things into , project manager: Yeah . project manager: industrial designer: like if we want this feature , let's throw it into there , and then from there decide whether it's basic , or it's non-basic .  so  I guess just to just to confirm that we know what we're doing in the next well in the thirty minutes after lunch anyway , marketing: industrial designer: project manager:  for  our Industrial Designer , you're gonna be thinking about the components concept .  User Interface Designer gonna be thinking about our user interface , and marketing you're gonna be thinking about trend watching . So  I dunno , just just to to ask now if you've got anything else you've thought about while we've been talking . Andrew ? marketing:  yeah , just I just wanted to ask then before we wrap up , shall we agree for sake of  sort of clarity and when we when we r resume that we'll u use this idea David's proposed , where we think of these three sort of buckets and anything anything we discuss about them is sort of , okay , we're talking about this . user interface:  just about the three buckets ,  what would go in the the device functions one ? industrial designer:  things like on off . Because the on off also goes , you know , like on off like power , not on off sound . Although you don't turn off the video on your T_V_ , but  you might wanna you know turn off the sound , project manager: Okay . industrial designer: say you wanna pick up the phone , there's a mute button , right , so you you have you have a choice of putting it on to  others or a device . project manager: Okay , so you're gonna have  audio which is gonna be like you know your bass settings and actual volume hi marketing: project manager: Okay ,  marketing: And then k I suppose quite likely what would happen is in the d device category there might be some which are just like the habitual standard and then others which are maybe a bit more industrial designer: Like random which we have no other place to put , but we need it somewhere there . industrial designer:  even even if it doesn't map very clearly what happens is that people at least have some in their mind . industrial designer: It's easy to use , I think that's one thing that  and I guess from the component point of view it's easy to build as well project manager: Okay . project manager:  so yeah , I guess just things to think about are you know like the fact it's gotta look good , industrial designer: project manager: because of who we're we're , you know , targeting this at