Um how do we actually go about designing a new television remote control ?
First thing to do is to come up with the design specifications . We need to know what our final product is gonna be like , so we need a a clear idea of exactly what this product does , uh how it works , and what the end-user is gonna want from this product .
Um .
Oh , a way I'd suggest that we could go about this is by designing uh several different prototypes of user interfaces for this product , um and then uh trying to get some feedback uh about
h how well these particular prototypes work , uh sorta find out what people think of 'em . Um using a remote control is is quite a subjective experience . Um ,
Hmm .
and different different people sort of prefer different things .
Um we should remember that remote controls are a a fairly standard piece of equipment . When a users using a remote control , he or she expects the buttons to be in certain places . So in some sense we're gonna we're gonna have to aim for a device which is fairly conventional in design uh so that we're not completely shocking people . But I think within that there is also room for us to introduce novel ideas uh and to make something that's that's perhaps a little bit different , something that stands out .
Um also in in designing the user interface we need to consider practicalities . Uh the first of these is is technological ye uh what can we do with the current state of technology as it is . The second is is economic , uh we need to find a balance between features and price . So as you mentioned things like voice recognition would would add to the price uh but it would also im improve the design of the product .
Hmm .
So I had a look on the  on the web uh to see if I could find a few examples of existing television remote controls . In analysing these we can consider what what things  what's good about them , uh what things do they get right , what's bad about them , what's wrong with 'em , um how we can improve on the designs that that that I found and what can we do to make our product stand out from from the large majority of remote controls .
Here's two examples uh probably at the extreme ends of the spectrum . Um on the left here we've got uh an engineering-based design for a remote control , so it's one that's got lots of buttons , it's it's fully featured , everything you might possibly want to do is there , you know , it's got forward , backwards , up , down , channel numbers , volume , uh freeze frame . Yeah , it's it's fully featured and it might take a while to get to learn to use it , but once you've learned it you can  you can do whatever you want with your T_V_ .
The one on the right is a lot more basic . It's just got the essential functions of the T_V_ changing the channel , play , stop , volume . It would be a lot quicker to learn to use it , but again th it's it's swings and roundabouts . There are disadvantages , you can't use it say to to freeze the television picture . Uh there's a lot of features that are missing from that remote control . So we've got to to find our  find a way of striking a balance between the two .