Functionality vs Usability

oneweb

Few months ago my grandad got a widescreen TV. Now, I'm not mad on the thing (heh, not that it makes a sod of difference, but hey) it has a remote with which, theoretically you should be able to control every single function of every single electrical device in the house. There are 54 buttons on it ffs! (Including 6 in a li'l compartment door) That's a Philips BTW.

Aunty got me over to hers over the weekend to connect up her spiffing new (and completely unneeded) Philips VCR DVD combi *COUGHjonesesCOUGH* This time, 47 buttons of a remote. But the stoopid thing is that there are four lovely buttons: UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT. So you wanna change channel up/down. No, don't be stupid. The UP/DOWN buttons are too obvious. Lets put P+ P- on some different buttons (return and cancel). OK, so the OnScreen menu will make use of the directional buttons. Not a chance. You gotta go up/down/left/right using the stop/ff/play/rew buttons. :mad: Talk about unintuitive The directional buttons, big and useful-looking as they are, only work in DVD mode :rolleyes:

As a final insult, hooking the bloody thing up to a stereo. It turns out that watching TV frequencies or Video in stereo will not play audio through the stereo (by design it seems). Only DVDs will play through the stereo. Gah!

Whoever is in charge of design in Philips AudioVisual should be forced to acquire a few years of real-world Joe Soap interaction.

Obviously the ppl who design the Philips One-For-All remotes are a different breed altogether!

Best usability IMO experience has got to be Panasonic. It was all just so fantastically obvious and intuitive right from the start

What other gripes do peeps have w/ appliances, which are most consumer friendly?

Kali

Originally posted by oneweb
As a final insult, hooking the bloody thing up to a stereo. It turns out that watching TV frequencies or Video in stereo will not play audio through the stereo (by design it seems). Only DVDs will play through the stereo. Gah!

I presume you hooked it up with a scart cable. Now why would a DVD player have the video and audio-in pins on the scart enabled? A DVD Recorder yes, but a player will most likely never use them, and would simply end up with additional/excessive noise on the analog audio paths. A DVD player isnt meant to be used as an audio switcher.

The proper way to get audio from every source would be to use the TVs L/R out (or the second scart).

Gyck

I'd agree the interface between the user and machine seems to be a secondary issue. The visual design of these products is obviously painstakingly researched and implemented. But the actual device you use to interface with the product? Hummm. If these products were web sites no one would use them.

I've got a Marantz DVD and stereo amp. The visual design of the two remotes is completely different! The shape and functionality of the buttons don't correspond. One uses AA batteries and the other uses AAA batteries. I can connect both together and use one remote (the one for the amp), but if I do I loose most of the functionality of the DVD remote.

I think that with these large electronics companies the various design groups don't talk to each other. I'm not sure how these kinds of problems are tackled on higher end products, but you'd think that after spending 100's of euro on consumer goods you'd get useable producs.

TheDuke

I must agree too. I just bought a brand new Philips 32" 100Hrz machine - absolutelty thrilled... however the menu structure and naming brought me to the conclusion that these where develoeped by some leaving cert students looking for a few quid on the side (no disrespect to any leaving cert students intended ... of course:D ). In the same listing some options where ON/OFF others YES/NO and for two options side by side one was MIN/MED/MAX and the other Minimum/Medi./Maximum... bloody hell!

Totally agree on the remote too... only that I now have two when watching a movie... and possibly a third will join once I get the 5.1 setup.

The Duke : ))