Comment by Pxtl
13 years ago
One look at the average TV remote tells you enough about TV manufacturers and their ability to do any kind of UI design.
Remotes like this: http://wardiesworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/raspi_samsun...
always remind me of this: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/11/this-is-what-happen...
have you seen the 2013 samsung remote? http://www2.crutchfield.com.edgesuite.net/pix.crutchfield.co...
It's like the remote designer's revenge. "Too many buttons? I'll show you what it's like to not have buttons!" This remote literally has a button on it that brings up an on-screen picture of a remote that you use by swiping around on the trackpad, so you can get at the buttons your remote is missing.
Ahh, Samsung. Always masters at figuring out how to do the right thing completely wrong. Holy crap that's ugly.
I'm a little surprised that these are all held up as "bad examples". For example, I looked at the picture of the Windows `wget` gui and thought "that doesn't look that bad." Sure there's a lot of dense information, but things are pretty well explained and it's pretty clear how it works. It is ugly, but it's also totally functional.
I guess ultimately, I really don't care how ugly something is if it's at least consistent and informative. However, I know I'm an outlier in this.
Imagine it wasn't wget, but a tool you'd never used before and you didn't know what the arguments meant. All those options are poorly defined. Also, it's confusing how filetypes switch from checkboxes to a listbox.
Trying to cram everything into one panel has left us with nothing but the controls and very little space for information.
Also, even if you wanted that layout, the alignments are terrible and the use of frames is arbitrary and inconsistent.
If I were in that situation, and I find I often am, my choice is to go and read the manual. I think this comes from years of reading man pages for command line tools, but the first step I feel should always be to read the instructions.
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Remotes are incredibly hard to design. My company builds Smart TV Apps we have just about every remote imaginable and that Samsung one you chose "just works" its like the Nokia 3310 of remotes. You can pick it up and use it without thinking about it.
Show me a remote that works better then that one and I can probably tell you why it sucks.
That was my first-cut search and so it's certainly not the worst example, but in software if I put buttons like "T.Link" and "DMA" and 4 unlabeled colored buttons right on the main home-screen of a consumer-oriented UI I'd be laughed out of the room.
Buttons like that are an artifact of the days when TVs didn't have on-screen UIs. The remote should not be designed for the 1% of users that fiddle with such things.
Do heatmaps and find out which buttons are actually used frequently give those big clear buttons with unabbreviated labels, and move everything else into the menus.
And the menus themselves - you have a whole screenful of space, you can actually describe to the user what each option does in helpful detail.
Apple remote comes to mind: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3176
I would like to hear you opinion.
The Apple Remote is solid similar to the Samsung but with out all the keys.
Roku's first remote was very similar but had the same problem - no back button. If you're going to do interactive apps on your TV you need a back button and an exit or "home" button - they're two different things. The Apple remote assumes very limited input almost zero text input so no numbers or extraneous keys like the color keys.
My favorite remote close to the apple one was the Boxee 1 remote (it too needs an explicit back button). But the slim, pared down front side design with the full keyboard on the back was very slick and usable.
http://old-blog.boxee.tv/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Boxee-Bo...
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The Apple remote is exactly the remote that came to my mind when I think simplicity. That's what most people use. up, down, left, right, center(for enter/go/confirm) and a menu (for options, back).
Thats 99% of a remote usage, the rest is handled by any GUI.
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The LG Magic Remote is by far the best remote I have ever used, particularly for "smart" content, browsing, using apps such as NetFlix, etc. It's almost as natural and simple as using a mouse and hands down beats other TV type input methods I've seen (game controllers, Apple remote, etc.).
Shame LG seem intent on ruining it with the spying, I hope they have a change of approach and resolve this.
One interesting thing about UI design - it all seems so obvious. But a guy who designed airplane cockpits told me that those "obvious" aspects were all paid for in blood.
They're obvious only in hindsight.
I had that Samsung remote and then upgraded to a newer model as the previous Samsung glass TV base literally exploded. And amusingly, the newer remote is far worse than the one you've used as an example. I wish I could revert!