project manager: No on the desktop you'll find you should find that there's a project documents link . We introduced ourselves , discussed the possibility of a macro facility , interac interacting the T_V_ a bit more ,  mentioning of bar-code , joystick for user manipulation ,  and ergonomics of the remote control as well .  also key is the corporate image should stay recognisable ,  f  your colour and slogan of course is down at the bottom there . Just to say quickly  I would have thought that only being used for a television the macro facility may now not be required .  I'd like to if possible hear from our Marketing Expert first , to help us gain an idea of where we're going to go . marketing: Okay , so  we did some research , we asked one hundred people their opinions on remote controls . We asked some  open ended questions , just , what are your opinions on the remote control , got a lot of re responses , and we asked some very specific questions , and we got a lot of good feedback . Please bear in mind this is only a hundred people , so even when the groups are divided into fifteen to twenty five , twenty five to thirty five , there's only maybe ten people fifteen people in each group . I often lose my remote control , the back of the couch , some place , and even if it's not lost permanently , it takes me a few minutes to find it . I remember trying to load a D_V_D_ player recently , and there were so many buttons , it took me I don't know maybe ten minutes to to go through each button , 'cause you have to press the shift button to access the yellow buttons , you know there's just a lot of stuff that no one really uses . I've seen some remote controls that are big , they have a lot of buttons , you have to hold down more than one key at one time to do something , they're just not great to use . Between the age of  fifteen and twenty five , most people would be willing to pay extra for voice recognition software . Most people'd be willing to pay for that  most people want remote controls to be pretty , they want it to be fancy , th they they want it to be different , everybody has a white remote control with black buttons , and a red button and a green button , not everybody wants that . It's a bit sketchy at some times , you're not gonna get good always accurate results , but for a very fixed number of words , you know you have , how many different words can you have for a remote control , up , down , left , right , channel five , channel seven , you know , how many , you can't have that many words . But after a while people may wanna return it , because if you have to to say som  most people use a remote control for switching to channels , and they say they do that about ninety eight percent of the time . Using the remote control , ninety eight percent of the time for changing channels , and that's for flickering through channels . So if you have to say up , up , up , up , if you have to do that all the time , then people might get a bit fed up with that and they may return it . However , oh , because the voice recognition software exists already , there's no need to spend money on research and development , but this does mean the need for microphones in the in the remote control , which is an unusual feature in my opinion . But if we do have the voice recognition thing , there's a lot of stuff that you can  get rid of . Either you have voice recognition by itself , which I think is a bit impractical for like night time if you wanna be watching television and you wanna be quiet , or I don't know you have a visitor coming round and the remote's only trained for you , it's a bit impractical to have just voice recognition by itself . But imagine you got rid of the regular remote part , then you can design the remote to look any way you want it to look , because there are no restrictions on physical size , or shape , it it could be as fancy as you want it to be , you know , it could be like a lollipop or something like that , something weird like that . marketing: So we have the three birds , we have the design , that we have the the fancy bit , right , the voice recognition's fancy , it's cool , it's different , it's radical , so , and then we have an extra bit I don't remember so I'm pretty sure people will buy the remote , but is it practical to have a voice recognition system in a remote control , I think is a big question .  , will people will people be willing to wait for the the period that it'll take to train the remote , 'cause I think it will the remote will  get better over time with the same user user , but for the first week or for the first two weeks are you willing to wait , are you willing to have a bad remote control . And  what if you have visitors come round , they stay the night , they wanna use the T_V_ , they can't use the remote because they speak differently to you .  , will people return the remote control , I think a lot of young people will buy the remote control , if they have the money , you know , so , project manager: If you could  marketing: do our audience have the money , but would they return it after a while because it's not as fast as pressing a button , it's not a practical . project manager: sor marketing: I think it's cool , project manager: if you could speed it up a bit , yeah . project manager: you've got your presentation now , industrial designer: How did where did user interface: Yeah , it's in the it's in the folder project manager: is it on the industrial designer: where did you get all your in information ? user interface: yeah . user interface: Okay , this is a brief run through of the  of the technical functions of the remote . As  is  the the the presentation is  already slightly obsolete because I had in mind something that would  be i be aimed at controlling multiple devices but  there's still stuff of relevance , so project manager: Okay . I've looked at looked at a num  couple of other  remote control models just for an idea of basic design principles .  and wasn't really satisfied by what I saw I have to say so this is more sort of springboard for  how these could be improved on .   basically the job of the device is to send commands to an appliance , in this case the television set . On the one hand and this  this particularly relates to its sort of earliest models where with you know i so so many buttons on it so about the size of the television set . And most of these functions are not going to be used , it creates a rather user unfriendly interface . And on the other hand there's a user focused approach that pares things down to just what what is most likely to get used .  With  a and a and of course there is a certain amount of sort of loss of function here obviously , but mostly that's relatively peripheral functions . And so you go for something that's fairly intuitive to use , and  well f the for the most part for T_V_ remote it's  tha that would be channel control and volume .  and if you if you if you are wanting to incorporate  control of a D_V_ D_V_D_ or  V_C_R_ presumably into that then there's a play , pause , stop , rewind , fast-forward , record , so forth .  but  the pro I think the problem with a lot of the sort of user focused designs that are about is that they sort of make assumptions in advance about what  what a given user's going to  want mo want to do from want it to do most . So , something that's  something that is more programmable , that  perh perhaps has the full range of functions available to it but you can then specify yourself what you're most likely to want .  so that those are then immediately accessible through fairly minimal number of controls ,  I liked Ebenezer's idea of including a joystick in that and  possibly a sort of fairly minimal number of sort of function buttons , and have a disp you then have some sort of basic display on it so that if you're  sort of cha changing from different modes for the device it'll tell you just exactly what  you know each direction of the  of the  joystick's going to do or wha or what each function button's going to do .  , this is actually a again slightly taking inspiration off of  games controllers , you know the Playstation control where you have four basic function buttons marketing:  . user interface: that are just marked with  distinctive  geometrical shapes but the and then dependent on what you're doing with it what game and so on  those  those functions are then sort of further specified . Click to save in where do I have to save it ? project manager: If you look on the desktop you'll find that there's a link to the project folder , or project documents .  project manager: Are you finding it okay or ? industrial designer: I'm just closing it now . marketing: Well like if you go to one ,  whichever one you were working industrial designer: that's it there , marketing: yeah , industrial designer: yeah . industrial designer: right I'm responsible for working design , this is basically the inside going on of the the  remote control . So we have the energy source , we have the user interface , this this is what I've seen .  the sender will push the button , the chip will respond ,  and then the dig digital signal is sent to the T_V_ . So   , if you go to next slide , you'll see you'll see  what do we need on the user interface . Do we need  many buttons , or do we need l many light bulbs that could be easier to  to realise which appliances are on or not .  , or would that take too much power , would we need more  components in there to supply the power ?  , the joystick is another thing , if we were gonna add that , there'd be more components to deal with that . industrial designer: so  we need to I dunno exactly what That's the design of the the the layout of the  electronic design ,  obviously there'll be more details once we've decided what we're putting on the user interface . marketing: industrial designer: I just used the it was a mess ,  I was just putting adding it together at the end there . industrial designer:  so you have the energy source obviously connected to the chip , and the user interface obviously contains everything . You have the switch turn it on , infrared bulb ,  will contact the T_V_ and will have whatever device or D_V_D_ player , the bulb will turn on to say it's on .  , so do we need on the control  different buttons to decide , or different light bulbs , would it be easier ?  , I dunno what we should decide on that . So , we've had some stuff put forward ,  along with the new user requirements ,  we've had a lot of kind of input I'd say so far . The power required ,  and the ability to the cost , it seems like for  an embedded system , this could cause us issues . project manager:  for example you see that there's fairly robust services on  computers via  via voice , I_B_M_ do  drag and dictate , but these require a lot of memory marketing:  voice activation could be an interesting idea but I think that our Ind Industrial Designer would probably upon some research say that it's maybe not feasible . project manager: however the idea of a joystick and then maybe an L_C_D_ which has been kind of put forward so far , it's almost like having a small T_ not T_V_ to say , but if you can control almost all of the functionality from the display , I don't know how much power an L_C_D_ would take , but it might be quite low ? marketing:  . I  industrial designer: L_C_D_ on the remote just telling you what's on , or  , interactive L_C_D_ or project manager: Well literally  if you can imagine the display maybe slightly larger than  those on a a mobile phone , user interface:  . project manager: something where you can read an an  fair amount of information , traverse maybe quite a few menus , if we maybe used mobile phones as a good example , they usually incorporate they have the keypad , and then evr all the other functionality is usually associated inside by traversing around .  and then we could have like say the common buttons as you say , volume control , changing channels user interface:  . I I was thinking that the remote the  sort of default functions for the joystick would be up and down for  volume , left and right for channels . project manager: We industrial designer: Do you think that people will get mixed up , like , they'll be looking at this screen and that screen and then , you know , trying to get everything working , would it be a bit confusing ? user interface:  I think probably for the first couple of hours of using it industrial designer: Yeah . user interface:  though  I w I would say that  we could probably probably be required to  mo most of the mobile phone displays you see these days are colour but we should probably try to stick to black and white .   colour could be a sort of subsequent development but  you know cost a bit of extra money f w w w w w once everyone's got the first , you know , oh colour's out , we'll have to replace it won't we . project manager: That would be my feeling as well , I think we could possibly create quite a useful user interface .  now  I don't marketing: Sure but the idea of a remote with a menu or and a joystick I think like I h if I was in the habit of buying remote controls then I would want one , project manager: sorry , go for it . marketing: but I think we don't have a specific audience , you know , like what is our target audience , what niche are niche are we trying to market and corner . You know , you know what I'm saying , like , for whom is this intended ? Everybody ? project manager: I think it could probably be aimed at most people who've used a mobile . project manager: if we are if we were to follow that avenue , we might be s you know  we're kind of almost relying on their experience with a mobile phone I suppose . project manager:  I imagine as well that the actual L_C_D_ and maybe to a certain extent the joystick as well would be for the additional functionality . Which maybe doesn't get used as often , maybe it makes it easy for them to figure out how to  change the channels as in the frequencies and such for reprogramming it . project manager:  and you can still have the main buttons that allow the people to turn the machine on and off , d up and down , it depends ,  maybe we have the fol  the joystick as a separate one for the other functions then , that there's just a a small number of as you were saying  buttons that have already been defined . And they can completely ignore most of the functionality which would be for say the o actual owner of the the T_V_ marketing: user interface: is that  you you you then basically you can then basically put it  for for T_ T_ for T_V_ remote alone , you could put   there are like I say the the the main things people do with a T_V_ remote control is the volume and the channel . user interface: But  but the but then o  obviously if  you know if you i if you wanted to access further functions i you you then get to sort of menu navigation .  with things like ch with things like tuning and channels  you know adjusting brightn  brightness and fiddly things that no one really bothers with , most T_V_s these days actually have menus anyway so this would be a fairly rational way of integra project manager: if we are  most of the  of the replacement remote market is sort of remote control rationalisation . user interface: you want one wo y you want one that'll do the job of all of them .  , if all you're replacing is one of the you know however many remotes you have in your living room ,  you know you still need separate remotes for everything else . user interface: I just think that  possibly project manager: Well this is a requirement that we have to stick to I'm afraid , user interface:  . project manager: So  this is this is one of the solid ones that has to be obeyed , for now . project manager: So I can understand your point , and I would agree with you , but this is our design spec for now .  user interface: Does that  would that include  access to say interactive functions on digital or cable ? marketing: Yeah . project manager: I would say so , yes , because then we have to be able to control the remote boxes , and that is a separate unit .  I think that it I would say that the design spec we've been with is for the television only for now . Maybe we'll hear differently , but for now marketing: So the joystick is just for differentness . Try and sell it t sell it to them to supply with  project manager: There is that possibility , yes . B However I don't know exactly where we'll be going with that , but it might not even be the avenue of the Marketing Expert , marketing:  . It's just , the way I figure it , twelve point five Euros per unit , we have to sell at least like three million or something like that , project manager: marketing: not to account for all the the money we waste on remotes that no one buys , you know , like if we made a perf if we made a ks for every remote we made someone bought it , then we have to sell a lot of remote controls . marketing: We just Is this gonna be enough to to sell ? project manager: Well , something else that you brought up was  the ability to lose a remote , which as you said you've done , in fact we've probably all done . project manager: I don't know if it's a gimmick or not , but have any of you ever seen those odd little key rings where if you whistle , it will beep and you tell you where it is . marketing: I had one of those , and my brother , and my dad , could have beat me up project manager:  . project manager: well I was going to say clapping ,   digital telephones ,  for example , one unit has of course you have to have that base unit , somewhere where there's a button , but maybe it's a button that you attach to the T_V_ . project manager: Something which you when you press that , it would beep to give its location away , on the remote unit . project manager: And that way , because we're attaching what would be a small button to the T_V_ , again say what , it would be a small transmitter ,  watch battery type scenario I would say , or something that if it was problems enough you could actually even just  I don't power that might be something that we could look into . Yeah , it's  putting a lot on your shoulders there , so  that could be something that separates us a bit from the market as well . Before we leave this meeting , it would be best to say this is what we're going this is the design we're gonna try and get , this is how we're gonna make ourselves look unique . project manager: Do we go for maybe a remote contro  sorry , we're gonna go for a remote control obviously , do we go for a small joystick that would operate say changing channels , up and down , and then , what , another button that would say that it's now being used to manoeuvre round the L_C_D_ . project manager: We could use say the left and right for changing channels and the up and down for volume , user interface: For volume . project manager: and marketing: But we have a frequency of how what people use a remote control for most . marketing: power is used like once per hour , industrial designer: I marketing: channel selection is used a hundred and sixty eight per hour , project manager: marketing: that's by far the biggest one , and then teletext , is still here , that's like fourteen , project manager: Vol Volume selection okay , yep , marketing: and volume selection . project manager: the teletext we're gambling with , and we're gonna say it's dead , the way of the dodo marketing: No , yeah , okay okay . Yeah ,  project manager: So we well , sorry , we could maybe even go as far as saying power button , small joystick , L_C_D_ , and then what maybe is it one more button to say that you're using the menu system , and with the possibility of pushing down on the joystick to say okay ? So we're having very very few buttons involved , user interface: Actually how project manager: but navigation around a menu for most things . user interface: Actually I would say maybe two two function buttons , the y we're now using the menus button and  and an og and an okay button .  certainly something I've found with the joystick on mo the joysticks on mobile phones is that a lot of the time th the device mistakes you trying to move it in one direction or the other for pushing down for okay . user interface: The o the o the other dis design constraint I think we should bear in mind is that people are you know very much used to using a remote control one handedly , so we need to make sure that e even with the joystick , you know something that can just sit comfortably in the palm of the hand and have the joystick just controlled by the thumb . Do we incorporate the idea of trying to f locate the remote control again via a beeping noise ? industrial designer: Yeah , think so . project manager: Do you mind looking ? marketing: I think because it's so small it might be an   if we only have like two three buttons it might be essential to have to have that project manager: The ability to locate it again . project manager: So that would require a  transmitter maybe attached to the T_V_ , just so that it says find me , and what , a basically a small microphone  on the actual unit , can maybe hide it in the base . So so industrial designer: no ? project manager: Sorry ? user interface: a small speaker you mean . user interface: project manager:  industrial designer: Nah , you'd see it anyway , if you hear it . project manager: E us we might be better with the sound possibly we could maybe incorporate marketing: W those little key-rings have both , industrial designer: Yeah . project manager: th e the true fact , considering the cost of an L_E_D_ , we could just incorporate it anyway . project manager: by the sounds of it , with what we're suggesting so far , your design  the user interface is still quite open , you could go for quite an interesting design . project manager: Because we're only going to have a very few key and you've got you know a small L_C_D_ , joystick , e I think it leaves you open to a a potential wide range of shapes , something that can make it stand out slightly . project manager:  if you could look into what we've suggested so far , the feasibility of  small transmitter ,  and such , maybe if an L_C_D_ screen requires too much power , or such . Ebenezer , Marketing Expert marketing: Well I can give you the frequency , what people what options people use most often , I guess that's gonna be important in the ts defining the the software side of the interface , right . project manager: yeah if you could maybe as well see what people think about the idea of this minimalist approach that we've taken , where of a joystick to control the very basic functions , and then the idea of manipulating it like you would a mobile . project manager: I don't know how easy that will be within the time frame , marketing: Okay . project manager: Feel free to email me if you think that  we've screwed something up and wanna get it rectified as soon as possible . industrial designer: So I should just look at  the speaker , the speaker and an L_E_D_ . user interface: project manager: Speaker and L_E_D_ for locating , industrial designer: And marketing: Transmitter .  , if we do end up trying to market this to television manufacturers then the  then the transmitter could actually be built into the television .  , and something that we can can easily be adopted at the last minute as well I'd say . project manager: The electronics could be s either placed externally or internally , makes no difference to the final product of the actual remote control , user interface: user interface:  if it w if we get a major television manufacturer to say y oh yeah we'll have that , save us the bother , then that's you know vast amounts of sales . industrial designer: P project manager: Oh , one thing that we've almost not talked about at all , my apologies for that , user interface , we also need to maybe get the slogan in here ,  it's , industrial designer: Fashion . industrial designer: yeah , the slogan's we put the fashion in electronics , isn't it ? project manager: My apologies .  , I think that's l almost the last minute thing industrial designer: 'S also look cool . project manager: So I'm not too concerned a that we haven't gone into depth about that . But it might be something you could consider when you're thinking about shapes ? user interface: project manager: In fact we might like to put a slogan on , and  possibly the two R_s to signify the company