Making remotes easier to use
Good idea, no?
Making remotes easier to use
Previously:
- HOWTO make a teddy-bear remote-control - Boing Boing
- HOWTO make a Senior Remote with only five big, friendly buttons ...
- Japan developing remote control for humans - Boing Boing
- Remote control lawn mower - Boing Boing
- Video of 1st radio control toy from 1950s - Boing Boing
- Man creates vigilante robot to battle drug dealers - Boing Boing
the latest
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With some clear heat shrink tubing this could be made fairly durable as well!
Yep.
So ... why didn't the manufacturer do this in the first place?
>gripe
You could also duct tape them together to make it universal.
My mother would point out that the need for something like this is exactly what watching TV would get me in the first place.
I tried something like this with my mother. Didn't work. Ended up with a Harmony remote programmed to 'watch tv' or 'watch dvd' buttons. She's happy now. Before she would have to call the cable company (or kids) nightly to figure out how to change inputs on the TV, etc.
The harmony is nice, but still *way* too overkill. Numbers are barely useful, could be dispensed with. Volume, mute, channel up/down power and that's about it.
satellite remote looks just like Xbox1 remote
W I N !
Simple solution to the entire issue here - http://weemote.com/, with models for both TV/Cable/Sat boxes and DVD/DVR players.
Have one of each for my kids, makes life much simpler.
you have got to be kidding me, right? Remote control companies don't put that stuff on willy nilly - there are designers and engineers who go to great lengths to make sure these are usable by most people instead of just morons.
The "designer" above assumes that the level of intelligence of your average TV viewer is lacking an IQ above 50.
And yet still, perfectly sensible people with no interest in electronics (e.g my father) still get confused over a TV with a few inputs and a separate sattelite receiver remote.
At some point, it seems people just can't be bothered to see the underlying logic (such as there is) and would prefer a simple "press button X for result Y" with as few distractions as possible.
And no. Half the remotes out there was designed with no more than "we need a button for X". Making them easily usable would cost unneccesary time and money.
One reason to make a remote more simple is to make it work for people with brain injuries.
My father had strokes that made him unable to solve problems. I opened up the satellite remote, and took out the contacts behind the buttons for everything except changing the channel up or down. He was able to use it then, and he had time to work through the channels.
Harold
crazy glue the unneeded buttons and paint the rest with whiteout.
One word: Pronto
/Love my 7500
//Commence with the bitching about price/complexity, but there really isn't anything you can't do with one. Make it as simple as you like.
Philips Pronto
The Philips remote in the picture (the one on the right) is fully programmable, if I remember correctly. They should have been able to combine all functions to that one.
As someone mentioned, get a Harmony for the person in need of a simple remote, and program it. Yeah, it's more expensive than construction paper, but Grandma ends up with a remote that has a button that says "Watch a movie" watch TV, etc. and then only has to use basic buttons to control everything anyway.
I've seen good remotes with well-arranged grouping of buttons, different tactile feel, height and force requirements that are easy to use with your eyes closed.
I've seen bad remotes with 4x10 arrays of identical buttons and labels of 4 point type.
That said, anyone who can't master the 5 main remotes it takes to control my home entertainment system (not counting the BlueTooth trackball and keyboard) doesn't get to change the channel. :-)
Another vote for Harmony. Giving a universal remote a state table was a stroke of genius.
Let's dumb down telephones next.
I propose a single crank on the side that alerts someone at a central facility who then connects you to whomever you want, all by just talking into a little horn thingie.
And make everything from bakelite. Bakelite is cool.
I always just cut the buttons off I don't use. Use an xacto knife and cut it flush with the plastic body of the remote. Works really well when they label each button right below it.
But I like this, who knows in a few months/years manufacturers might make plastic snap on versions of these?
When I designed my PhonoBOt4004 Remote Control Turntable conversion I only had a 12 button remote unit available. I ended up with 7 unused buttons on the handpiece and a much larger circuit board inside the turntable. Not happy about 7 buttons that only produce clicking noises.
Within a week of finishing the project I discovered a compatible 4-button remote board was available. I'm now tearing out the work so I can rebuild it with the 4-button version:
START
STOP
CUE (pause)
ADVANCE ARM.
I'd rather spend a day at the bench doing it over than have a compromised outcome.
The iPod scroll wheel (and the Zune whatsadoodly thing) are proof that you don't need dozens of tiny, indistinguishable buttons even if your product does have a lot of features. Most modern-day remotes are case studies in bad interface design.
Not to mention how few "universal" remotes actually live up to their promise of controlling everything.
One great feature of B&O products: Certain of the phones will control the volume of their audio/visual gear. How obvious is that? The phone rings, you pick it up and use it to turn down the TV so you can talk. Genius.
Hey malinda, I don't know if you check back for a response to your troll bait.
I've rebuilt engines, automatic transmissions, and carburetors and I give up pretty quick on a remote. I rarely watch tv, mostly movies on DVD. Why the hell should I master some piece of nonsense so I can sit on my ass and be entertained?
Remote designers can stuff it up their remote hole.
The Apple remote has effectively 6 buttons. It is adequate to control pretty much anything that can be modelled as a not too hairy furball of menus. So much less painful than the 237 buttons of the remotes provided with M$ media edition PCs.
still no cheap, reliable voice recognition remote?
Workin' on it, Sport. You'll be the first to know.
oh no, someone else can do that one, you're not getting off that easy. From Ross we expect The Telepathic Remote!
http://www.brainfingers.com/
http://ida.first.fraunhofer.de/bbci/index_en.html
though I think you're up to the challenge of producing the Clairvoyant Remote.
I've seen a very similar picture before, I think in Designing Interactions.
Aha! I did!
I'm still waiting for a cable-free home entertainment system. No more wires and cables from DVD to tuner to cable box to TV input 4. Just let the components talk among themselves.
Buy a 99 cent remote from Dollar Tree or some such store, and then customize it by gluing or painting the buttons. Hide the real remote.
It's just occured to me that I don't own a single remote control. I suddenly feel more free and even more like that guy from The Onion.
We call that a Cocktail Party.
Brilliant.
My TV remote has a "delete all the channels" button (well that's what it does, anyway). The idiot who designed it should be punished by having to use it for the rest of his life.
In the 90s Sony had a TV remote that you could use from two sides.
It came in a hard case sleeve that would hide the other side.
One side had the simple buttons for on/off, volume, and channel up/down. To get to the complicated buttons needed for setting up the TV, you had to pull the remote out of the hard case sleeve, turn it around, and slide it back in.
I thought that was a really good idea!
how about running a cable from the remote to the TV? You'd have no signal problems that way, the battery would never run out and you couldn't lose the remote. Or better yet, build the remote into the TV!
#38
HAHAHAHA eeee
my housemate left to go to thailand for for two weeks with strict instructions not to touch anything.
still, i broked it
(but only in my mind - anyone under the age of twelve could work this complex home entertainment thing-a-me-jig like a dream)
less is more, I agree cut off buttons never used, as long as text is on the housing.
I find the arrangement of buttons to be awkward on many remotes, most used buttons should be grouped together. dedicated DVD buttons I never use zoom, subtitle, angle.
poor HMI!
I have to wonder at commenters who seem to feel that mastery of a remote with three dozen rice-grain-sized buttons, labeled with tiny grey type that would be difficult to read in the middle of the afternoon with the shades open and all the lights on, let alone in the darkness in which I prefer to watch movies, somehow connotes intellectual superiority. It's like claiming that you're a financial wizard because you roll your own pennies.
#3: My mom does that. Duct-tapes the whole mess to a piece of cardboard to make a mega-remote-of-doom.
Another benefit of the mega-remote-of-doom is that it's so huge you can't loose it down the seat cushions.
Guys, this may look funny to you but this is exactly what I had to build for my Grandma who is suffering from dementia. There simply was no off-the-shelf-remote that was simple enough to explain to her. The Apple remote does have something in its favour, except the buttons are too tiny.
Wow, that's creepy, I was just thinking about this yesterday when I realized that I only use two buttons on my TV remote (on/off and video input). Okay, maybe not creepy, but coincidental at least.
A large part of my frustration with the whole remote thing is that you most receivers/dvd players/tvs/etc... Don't have state commands, they have toggles. In other words, one command turns your tv on or off, depending on its' current state.
This gets bad when a system misses a command, and systems seem to miss commands all the time.
It would be a lot easier to make simple interfaces that still provided the power of our current audio/visual hardware if manufacturers stopped making command codes that required the system to be escorted step-by-step through the process.
Maybe in the interim manufacturers should take a page from software design, and make two remotes for their systems; one for people that want it simple, and one for people that are interested in using all the features the system has to offer.
I do have to confess though, that part of me enjoys the fact that you can't just buy a high-end system, you have to actually understand it to use it. It's always kind of pleasant to me to find nice things that require your own sweat and tears to enjoy.
I did last weekend for my moms - thanks BB!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gnosis/3347939803/