We decided not to go for speech recognition technologies because of some reasons and we are not decided about u the use of L_C_D_ screen on on the remote control because of costs . marketing: industrial designer: project manager: So you are you saved your y your presentation somewhere ? marketing: Yep . What I found in order of importance from less to more important is that people want an easy to use device . After they they want something new technologic technologically speaking , but the most what they what they find more more interesting , more or more important it's  a fancy look and feel instead of  instead of the current the current trend which was f the functional look and feel . industrial designer: marketing: So now more more cool aspect , ma more a cooler aspect  rather than a device with many functions and many buttons with instead of i instead of ha of a device which can do many things , a device which is pleasant to to watch , to see . marketing:  also Well in in Euro in in Paris and and Milan the user interface: industrial designer: marketing: in Paris and in Paris and Milan the the current trend of  of clothes , furniture and all this all this fashion it's it's fruit and the the the theme is fruit and vegetables . marketing: And also in the in the U_S_A_ the the current the mor the most popular feeling it's it's a spongy . marketing: So maybe we should we should think in in this direction , so user interface: What what do you mean by fruit and vegetables and spongy ? marketing: user interface: What you mean clothe industrial designer: Spongy means it it's like sp marketing: Fruit vegetables is the the new have you seen the last exposition of clothes in Milan ? user interface: No , I missed that one . marketing: Yeah , I I didn't miss an project manager: user interface: industrial designer: marketing: I didn't miss and I saw that the fruit , there are many fr pictures of fruits and vegetables in the clothes . user interface: Oh , they're okay so they're not like dressed as a carrot they just have like pictures of fruit on , okay . user interface: So we're not gonna have a remote control in the shape of of a banana , marketing: So te textu textures , yeah . industrial designer: But what's your suggestion how we can have some shape like that on the remote ? project manager: Well so this is in the next slide certainly . project manager: It's not ? user interface: marketing: It's user interface: So which fruit are you thinking of ? marketing: And  . project manager: industrial designer: marketing: I ha I haven't thought of any particular fruit , but the general aspect of the of the remote control may may could remind some kind of vegetable , some kind of instead of vegetable , some natur   natural object or something . marketing: But yeah it it depends on the project manager: So maybe you maybe you can display a banana on the L_C_D_ . user interface: Oh , so you want the remote control to be the shape of a fruit , project manager: user interface: or you want just some kind of like fruit logo on the industrial designer: Means buttons are in the shape of fruits , marketing: Yeah maybe the shape the shape industrial designer: buttons are in the frape shape of fruits or something , apple , banana , something like that . marketing: 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 . marketing: So we shouldn't be at re really attached to to the trend user interface: So something that looks half like a fruit and half like an elephant . user interface: But okay , marketing: user interface: I'm not , I'm not really sure if  that would really appeal to everyone though , maybe just to fashion gurus , like maybe just like a little bit n a little fruit picture somewhere in the corner , but I don't know about  I dunno how ergonomic a , an orange is . I think in my opinion we should focus on on young people because they are more open to new devi new devices user interface: To fruit ? marketing: and also yeah according to the marketing report ninety p ninety five percent of young people was was was able to to buy a a n a cooler remote control . user interface: But is it  is fruit cool ? marketing: What ? project manager: That's a question . marketing: What ? user interface: Is fruit cool ? marketing: Yeah ?  Is the new trend of the user interface: Well I guess , you know , Apple has the iPod so , imagi marketing: user interface: just 'cause they have an apple on their on their product , doesn't mean fruit is cool . marketing: No I think we we should think about a a shape with it a device with a shape of some user interface: Okay , but it has to be easy to  to use though and to hold you know , you don't wanna pear or a watermelon . Don don't you think we can find  the shape of a fruit which is handy to use ? user interface: Well , probably the only thing is a banana that I can think of , industrial designer: Banana . project manager: user interface: So , but  you also have to you have to also have , fit r all the buttons and you know . user interface: The thing is you have t normally with  with buttons , they have to be at some point attached to a circuit board so if you're gonna have things like on a cylindrical kind of device it may be difficult to kind of to build . marketing: Yeah but I li I like your idea that we shouldn't have a lot of buttons b buttons so project manager: Okay . Yeah and you you you will not have pla enough a lot of place to put a L_C_D_ on a banana also . marketing:  do you want a an L_C_D_ with twenty five Euros ? project manager: Well , you're the Marketing Expert you should tell us if it is too much or not . user interface: Well , this is marketing: I think 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 , project manager: marketing: so , I will give more importance to the look and feel than rather than the project manager: So So you you you suggest to go f marketing: new inputs and also it's I'm not convinced about this L_C_D_ because you need  internet connection , you need more things , it's not just buying a new control re remote , you need buying control remote , buying  project manager: Okay . project manager: you're simply looking s to a remote control that looks like a banana with few buttons with only a few buttons . So I received an email  around lunchtime letting me know that the brilliant minds at our technology division had developed an integrated programmable sample sensor sample speaker unit ,  which is a way for you to have a conversation with your coffee machine and or remote control . industrial designer: But it's just a speaker right ? user interface: It's no , what it is , it's it's very industrial designer: It's not a microphone . user interface: It has a has a microphone , has a speaker , it's got a little chip and it allows you t industrial designer: Actually I'm not reading microphone there , so that's why you can all have conversation , it just to speak to you . 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 . user interface: 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 . user interface: But basically the thing is , we have this technology available industrial designer: In-house . user interface: 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 , industrial designer: - , user interface: so  it it but it basically means we c we can kind of consider this from  you know  a theoretical or usability kind of viewpoint without worrying too much about you know how to develop it because we have this already done . user interface: Whilst you know , some people might get annoyed if we  if we just dump it , project manager: I there's something that I unclear really understanding . Is this a technology that recognize keywords speech keywords ? user interface: It's it it's no , well , it's it'll recognize  I guess keywords , but you know keywords in a certain order like a phrase . You train it for a certain  , for a certain phrase , you say the the example they said that they have  up and running with their prototype is  well they've actually integrated into the into the the coffee machine that  that we're producing is , 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 ? project manager: And it's just to , it's just to playback something ? user interface: Yeah . So actually that was a bad example , 'cause it doesn't actually ask how do you want your coffee because it can't really understand the response , so . user interface: Only , like , only in the sense that it it can recognize a set a set target kind of word an project manager: Yeah . user interface: It's designed it's designed as a fun kind of thing , project manager: Yeah yeah . user interface: but I guess you could use it as  as a way to implement  project manager: So it it's c  it it marketing: Yeah but you can u project manager: it is a   easy  a fancy thing that you you can bring to we can bring to the remote control that will not have any  user interface: Completely pointless yeah . project manager: yeah comp completely pointless for the inter for from the interaction point of v point of view . user interface: marketing: Yeah but the can we use it for saying okay , channel fifty , channel twenty ? user interface: Well yeah , that's the thing , if 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 , you have to s tr train it to l to learn channel fifteen , that whole thing , not just the word channel and the word fifteen , it doesn't have that kind of logic in it . So this is so this is this is much more than tak taking this technology , bringing it to the remote control and using it . So if if if it is something that you can we can bring easily and to put it into the banana remote control user interface: Yeah . user interface: I  I I I don't think it's worth it though , 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 project manager: Okay . So if we can just move on to the next slide , I've just done a quick mock-up of   some of the features of our potential funky-looking  remote control marketing: project manager: It doesn't look like a banana at all . user interface: Well , you see , I was I was unaware at this point of th of the fruit focus , project manager: Yeah . project manager: But you you can fit i you're saying now you can fit it to marketing: Looks like a tr look likes a a tro a tropical fruit . user interface: 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 . user interface: But  , I've just indicated here , we could have actually two scroll wheels , 'cause I think the scroll wheel is a fairly  key part of , you know , industrial designer: Stable thing , that's right . To have , user interface: I think everyone has has agreed that it's that it could be quite a useful  thing , so . user interface: 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 , project manager:  . user interface: because it's it's the volume i it's , you know it's very handy for it to have  instant kind of  feedback  and response , so . user interface: But  , I've also included this turbo button because I think , you know , every design should have a turbo button , and well marketing: What's a turbo button ? user interface: 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  the tuner on the T_V_ is not gonna be able to to switch between stations as fast as you can scroll , so you know , the th the person might want to have a  Might want to be able to scroll past television stations without seeing what's on them , in which case it just waits until you stop scrolling and then , you know , displays that station . Or they might want to scroll and and have a quick glimpse of it , even if it lags behind what they're doing . marketing: It con it controls the speed ? user interface: Yeah , so with this turbo button you can , say , skip over t channels if  , you know , if I'm if I'm going if I'm scrolling past them and you know , it's  , 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 . project manager: user interface: So yeah , that's  , those are the two important  features I think we need on the remote , industrial designer: You know , i it could be , you know , if we if we wanna have like a very cheap kind of device , 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 , 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 project manager: It's enough . user interface: and it's still very it may even be for most for some people more functional than their current remote , but if they have these scroll wheels , so ,  you know , what other buttons do we want ? industrial designer: user interface:  we could have well , I guess you need an on and off switch , project manager: Switch on . user interface: but you could you could o you could turn it turn it on by taking the top off the banana maybe , you know , it's kind of like a spy kind of flick thing . project manager: So i it looks like we're going completely to forget about the L_C_D_ thing . user interface: Well , that's the thing , as have we decided that we can only spend , twenty five Euro ? project manager: I think that user interface: Well not spend , but you know , charge twenty five Euro . project manager: We can't use that to to comman co communicate , industrial designer: Communicate . project manager: it's just a thing marketing: Yeah , but we can say channel twenty five . marketing: No ? user interface: But then you have to have a template for every channel , for a hundred channels , you have to be able to to recognize industrial designer: 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 . Is it design for a coffee machine ? user interface: Well that's its current application , I would presume that it's kind of , they wouldn't design it to handle a hundred things th so . project manager: You want to g to move to your slides ? user interface: But  industrial designer: Yeah , that's right , yeah . project manager: You're finished ? user interface: Well I just I just made the point , I don't I don't know if that speech recognition is , you know , even if we can do it , I think it's not really appropriate for  television environment . user interface: But  I did have one thing from a previous meeting , you were talking about  being able to find the remote control marketing: Yeah . user interface: and I was talking about extendin being able to extend the remote control by having you know , a base station that can control other things as well . user interface: It might be useful to have some kind of base station , even if it's just you press on a button on it and  and the remote control starts beeping , you know , this is a way of finding the remote . user interface: Y in that case maybe the maybe the speech recognition the speech thing could be useful just to say I'm here project manager: Exactly yeah . user interface: but  it's probably a bit of overkill if you could just have a a beeping industrial designer: So it's a speech synthesis kind of thing , user interface: It's speech industrial designer: something has been  stored and it's just  spoken out . user interface: It's it's speech synthesis and s it's speech kind of , not really speech recognition , but kind of pattern matching , yeah industrial designer: So I was of the idea that we can have two kind of power supplies , one is the usual batteries which are there , they could be chargeable batteries if there's a basis station kind of thing and on top of that we can have solar cells , when the lighting conditions are good they can be used so it'll be pretty  innovative kind . Then  we need plastic with some elasticity so that if your if the remote control falls it's not broken directly into pieces , there should be some flexibility in t user interface: I guess that fits in with the spongy kind of design philosophy . Then controls for the traditionals u traditional users we can have the push buttons so that they don't feel that it's an alien thing for them . user interface: So , just one second , when you say double curve , what do you actually mean ? You reckon you could like draw us a thing on the , on the whiteboard 'cause I'm not sure industrial designer: Double curve is , you have curves on both the sides if I'm right . user interface: Okay , but like , kind of convex or concave ? industrial designer: So , it could be curve , so it could be convex , conve concave , depending on what what we want . industrial designer: These are the three things , and there are different materials , with plastic you can have double curve but with  certain other materials we cannot have double curve . So there there was  there were many other materials like wood , titanium and all those things , but plastic is I think is the most appropriate one , project manager: Yeah . industrial designer: it'll bring the cost down user interface: Although , you know , wood could be  quite a stylish  option , industrial designer: and anyway it's user interface: if you take like , nice quality kind of wood that's got a nice grain and you kind of put some , some varnish on . project manager:  but i but there is no elasticity which could be industrial designer: Wooden cases user interface: Well it depends , you have the outs the wood itself is not gonna break so you don't have to worry too much about the case being broken , project manager: Yeah but the components inside . Yeah but inside you know you could have you can still have some kind of cushioning that's not visible to the to the user . project manager: And also  user interface: And  you could also , you can have just a very thin veneer of wood as well . user interface: That's true , but are we set on the banana idea ? industrial designer: project manager: Well it look like marketing: Actually project manager: it looks like you are all targeting that marketing: I was thinking that the user interface: project manager: yeah ? marketing: the shape of a banana is not it's not really handy . marketing:  I don't know the name o o in English  This industrial designer: Is it an e apple which has marketing: it's not a fruit it's a vegetable . user interface: Ah yeah , marketing:  user interface: is it what's it in French ? project manager: Poivron . marketing: Oui c'est ca user interface: Yeah , okay , so capsicum or pepper . project manager: But  they do d marketing: And it's al it also suits with the double curve for easy of project manager: Yeah . user interface: I don't know , it seems a little bit kind of bulky to me , like project manager: Yeah . marketing: No ,  in a project manager: It's not re it user interface: like with a banana you can have project manager: you you think it's really fancy and fun ? You think that young people that are marketing: I'm sure it's fun . More than a banana ? marketing: But banana is not so handy , user interface: Well industrial designer: Banana is more handier as compared to this I think , and to capsicum . user interface: But like a banana you can you can be holding like this and have the scroll wheel kind of on top project manager: Yeah . user interface: and just roll it back and forth like that , project manager: It's kind it's kind of it's more  user interface: but with  I don't know how you would hold a capsicum and project manager: it's really ergonomic , it's fit in the hand and you've a lot of surface to to put the controls . industrial designer: Okay , so push buttons for the traditional users so that they don't feel they are alienated , just and a scroll button with push technology for channel selection , volume control and teletext browsing . These are the three scroll buttons which are already available with us in the company and we we can go ahead with that . Then  there are different kind of chips , one one is the basic chip and the regular chip and one an adva advanced chip . And  regular chip supports speaker support , so this functionality could be used for tracing the mobile phone which has been misplaced . user interface: So is that , when you say speaker support , you mean it just has some output pinned which which which kind of industrial designer: It could be a beep kind of thing . user interface: Okay , but the speaker is actually attached to the to the chip in some way , or is just the the signal ? industrial designer: Yes , yes , that's right , it's it's onto the chip , user interface: Okay . So are there any issues where we place this this chip to make sure you can actually hear the the speaker from the outside of the banana ? industrial designer: That will be the volume control I think which which a user shou it it should be already pre-defined . Yeah , but the speaker , if the speaker is actually on the chip , then if it's too far away from the the casing , or if the casing is too thick , then you may not hear the the speaker . industrial designer: As or as hearing is concerned , we can have some gap at some place , user interface: Yeah . So that's something we have to keep in mind with the actual physical design is to keep the the speaker close enough to the outside . And  these were the findings which I I saw with the web web , that user wants to have control more than one device wants to control more than one device from the same remote control , so our T_V_ remote can have little extra things to support additional devices like V_C_R_ D_V_D_ players which are usually attached with the T_V_ , because users are like this and they don't want to have one remote control for everything , so with this additional little , we might be having slightly better market for us . user interface: Although , if It depends , if we like , if we are concentrating on like a fruit design , then maybe maybe we wanna sell a collection of fruit , you know , like a different fruit for each device . user interface: Cause that , you know , that sometimes people like to collect  you know things that of a similar type . marketing: I think that would be funny at the beginning but after one month you will be tired of be surrounded of fruits . user interface: project manager: industrial designer: And  as well as I could see on the web the scroll button is becoming really  hot thing s project manager: Okay . user interface: Well marketing: Actually I I didn't understand very well this trace speaker lost control . Now let's say marketing: So you you have to buy two things , the banana and the basis station . industrial designer: It's like a telephone handset is there and the basis station for the telephone hand set is there . So now what user gets additionally he doesn't have to buy batteries , they're rechargeable batteries , so over the period of cor time he'll recover the cost . So you're having the basis station and there is a button , if you press that button wherever the remote it'll start beeping so you know where the remote is . user interface: I think it's kind of people would find that worth it even if it wasn't  a recharging station , even if they didn't have to buy extra batteries , you know . industrial designer:  this is basis station is nothing more , just it's a wire which is coming from the main cable and  you're having one socket on which the thing sits . user interface: Although you do need to include R_F_ kind of circuitry in the remote . Anyway , we are not using really advanced technology , L_C_D_ has already been ruled out , A_S_R_ has been ruled out . I'm just wondering actually , 'cause , you know , I this whole fruit thing with the banana , it's  it seemed like it first seems a bit kind of  niche , like only a few people would really want a banana , industrial designer: And user interface: but what if it was kind of  a stylised banana ? You know , rather than having it kind of you know yellow and really looking exactly like a banana , you could make it kind of silver . And  , you know to give you kind of the idea of a banana but without it looking you know completely kitsch . user interface: Well , you know , I don I don't know how many peop industrial designer: marketing: project manager: If you make something that looks like a banana it should have the colour of a banana . No , I I industrial designer: A yeah , otherwise it'll be mis means you don't get b any feeling then . industrial designer: It's neither a banana nor a user interface: Yeah , like this colour this colour Maybe , you know , maybe like still in the shape of a banana .  , but you know , just maybe maybe not exactly the same texture as a banana and just kind of , you know because the thing is it's gonna be a little bit difficult to make  to give like the texture of a banana anyway and to k to have the exact shape . I think if you're gonna not be able to do it properly you may as well do it in a stylised way that just looks a bit more kind of , you know , twenty first century rather than sixties or seventies . Before before st before ending the meeting I'd like to to draw some sketch about the pro future prot prototype . project manager: Well no , not not you , you can finish your slides before industrial designer: Okay . Anyway , users'll be so the findings is users'll be very interested in our locator device to find their misplaced remotes . user interface: project manager: So I I propose that you go to the whiteboard user interface: Yeah . project manager: and we're going to report all the ideas we had we had during this these presentations just to draw some sketch about what will be the prod final product user interface: Okay . project manager: and  where Superman go banana and  user interface: project manager:  extra func functionalities such as wheels ,  the speaker unit  well not in order not to lost the  the device , industrial designer: project manager: I do I don't remember you call it ? industrial designer: That's right . user interface: Yeah , so , I guess you wanna hold like the way the end of the banana you wanna kind of hold as ma you maybe wanna kinda hold like a gun rather than 'cause you don't want it to point kind of towards the floor . user interface: So you know , so if you have like marketing: What about what about this shape ? More or less . project manager: I if it i if it has really the model shape of a bana you could marketing: Yeah , but how many buttons do we need ? project manager: the the starting is good but it could it should have more the shape of a banana if you want to point really a at the thing . If you don't want to to to do that movement which is which is difficult if you don't have to do it in fact , it's better . So ti time is running , industrial designer:  what about a project manager: we have to we have to we have to to move forward . user interface: So project manager: We have a a basis  , how do you call it ? industrial designer: The base station . user interface: okay , so I guess we need , you know , something that can fit a banana shaped object . user interface: Okay , so it's  project manager: So we that means we need a button on th on the on the basis . So we are going to add  also  you as you suggested the whee some wheels to control the volumes and channels and your tur turbo turbo  button . Yeah , which I think it's it's probably best actually on the on the underneath of the the device , industrial designer: Turbo button . user interface: so you have project manager: And the and the wheel a a at the level of the thumb for instance . user interface: So yeah , you need one one here and one on on the other side , so you got volume an and channel . project manager: Oh , just the switch , industrial designer: Remotes don't have power on off switch . They are not going to cost you much , everything is in-house and now you don't want the traditional users to be apprehensive of this . user interface: Well , I dunno if the traditional user is gonna buy a a banana remote in the first place , you know . user interface: Y  you need to kind of keep it  industrial designer: But you know our targets are very high , means fifty million Euros is the profit which we want make . marketing: What about user interface: Yeah , how many of these did we wanna sell ? I can't remember , industrial designer: Twenty five . marketing: user interface: Yeah , but how many units did we need to to sell ? industrial designer:  forty th four . project manager: The next step is to go for to f is to go to  to building a prototype , based on this , okay ? user interface: Okay . You have to  work on the look and feel  design and you have to work on the user interface , in fact you two you have to work together to model the first  f first prototype . user interface: project manager: Okay ? marketing: I wo what about adding the this word spotting , keyword spotting recognition saying volume up volume down ? project manager: It's too difficult . marketing: It's too difficult but people like innovation and that's really  innovative and I don't know if it would cost a lot , just a few five words . project manager: It's not a possi it will not be possible to implement it for the next prototype , so t it's in the next prototype so let's skip it . project manager: Yeah , maybe , for the n if if if it it works well , we'll go for  an orange one