tv remotes

So I’m thinking about TV remotes this morning, thanks to a news item my dad forwarded to me, and how mine (a typical comcast DVR model) has no less than 55 buttons on it. How did they get to 55 buttons? It’s no wonder it takes me awhile to get used to this contraption.

One design approach I use for a complex UI is progressive disclosure: move the most typical features up front or to the initial view, and move the less important ones further away or slightly obscured.

This remote has done a little of that, in that the picture-in-picture controls are smaller buttons at the bottom. I didn’t notice they were even there until just now, or that I even had picture-in-picture.

So applying progressive disclosure would be to design a TV remote that was more like a flip phone. Have the most commonly used buttons on the outside of the device, like volume up and down and channel up and down, but then when you flip open the device it would have a mobile phone like multi-touch screen. Display the TV’s guide there and manage recording options and other TV functionality on that multi-touch screen in a phone like interface.

This would remove the need for so many buttons, plus have the added benefit of giving users a multi-touch experience for browsing and interacting with the TV guide.

Then you could also browse alternative programming or recorded programs or review recording settings without interrupting what’s playing. You would have access to a full virtual keyboard for searching for programs or browsing richer content by pointing, which is impractical today. Remotes now only offer up/down/right/left/select interactions. There would be no need for a 1..9 keypad, the page up / down, menu and guide buttons. They’d all be done in a mobile style interface by flipping the device open. The buttons on the device would reduce to: power, play, pause, forward, reverse, stop, record, info, mute, and channel/volume up and down. Maybe a couple more (e.g. recall/last)

One downside of this design though is that people with poor vision currently can see the guide on the TV with a full sized screen. It’s a big viewing area. On a small handheld device one might need reading glasses to browse the program listings and manage their recording schedule. Also, currently your focus is on the TV. Having more interactions on the TV might feel more natural than on a separate device. However, the next generations are likely more comfortable with mobile style devices and interacting with them with multi-touch. So this design might be more familiar with younger demographics.

So as multi-touch screens become cheaper and cheaper, and people become more attuned to multi-touch, I wonder if a design like this will make more and more sense. I’m not likely to ever make a device like this myself, so I’m posting these notes here with the hopes that someone else creates something along those lines.