Shuichi Koga
CSE 510
The Samsung video cassette recorder that I use is designed so that there are very few buttons on the recorder itself. All relevant functionality is instead built into the accompanying remote control device. My room-mates absolutely refuse to use the remote, however. After talking to them, I came to the conclusion that there are two significant "features" that were driving my room-mates crazy when using the remote: the inability to determine what the remote is actually controlling easily, and the inability to program the VCR.
The remote is designed to control both the TV and the VCR. The bottom half of the controller consists of VCR-only command buttons, and a jog wheel for freeze framing. Thoughtfully, the record button is recessed, making it less likely to be hit. Unfortunately, it is located right next to a very small stop button, which makes it more likely, when the lights are turned down, for someone trying to find the stop button to accidentally hit the record button instead. This, however, is not the source of problems for both my room-mates and myself.
The upper half of the remote consists of buttons that are used to control both VCR and TV functionality. In order to minimize the number of buttons that the user needs to theoretically worry about, the top half consists of a small number of buttons. However, just in case there is functionality of the TV or VCR that the buttons can't handle, the entire top half can actually be flipped open to reveal a more extensive set of buttons.
The VCR remote is designed to control both the TV and the VCR. The designer of the remote decided to allow for switching between whether or not the remote controlled the TV or the VCR using two buttons named TV and VCR, respectively. However, the buttons do not lock into place or give any other type of feedback regarding whether the remote is currently controlling the TV or the VCR, so the only way to find out if the remote is controlling the TV or VCR is by pressing another button to find out, or by pressing the desired button before attempting to perform an action. Adding to the confusion is the existence of the TV/VCR button, which controls whether or not output from the VCR should be from the currently running tape or from the selected input signal. This button is a bit of a misnomer, since the input signal could be from the TV or from some other source (like a DVD player). The net result is that the user has three distinct choices with no reasonable feedback as to whether or not the user did the right thing.
From the designer standpoint, I could only come up with one reason why buttons with no feedback (or better yet, a switch of some sort) were used. The buttons associated with the non-flipped open top half are built into the cover itself, and merely press the relevant buttons underneath the cover. It might be harder to do a button which stays down, since both the button on the cover and the button underneath the cover need to exhibit the same behaviour.
It seems that the root of the problem is the funky button-which-pressed-another-button design of the top half of the remote. Perhaps a better thing to do would be to hide only those buttons that the designer does not wish to present to the user, and mount the buttons that the designer wants to show on something not flippable. This will allow the designer to put in either buttons that stay down when pressed or some type of switch to give better feedback as to whether the remote is currently set to control the TV or the VCR.
As noted before, the top half of the remote can be flipped open to reveal a more extensive set of buttons, but the VCR is designed so that the need to use it should be extremely rare. Unfortunately, in one fairly commonly used set of interactions, namely programming the VCR, it becomes necesssary to flip open the cover. It's not obvious, however, that this needs to be done.
There are several buttons that we will focus on: the menu button, which brings up a menu for options regarding the VCR, the prog button, which brings up a menu for programming the VCR, enter and exit buttons, two shift buttons (left and right shift), and the two channel up/down buttons.
All options in the menu are modifiable utilizing the channel buttons, the shift buttons, and the exit/enter buttons, leading the user to reasonably expect that something similar can be done with the programming of the VCR. However, when the prog button is pressed, and the user is requested to enter the channel to tape, none of the other buttons work; rather, the user at this point must open the flip-cover and then use the formerly hidden keypad to type in the station. The user must then switch back to using the channel and shift buttons to enter the appropriate time/date of the program to tape.
This seems like there are two problems. First, if the user has to open the flip-case anyways, why bother making the programming button available with the flip-case closed? Second, since the time and date of the program is also numerical in nature, why not allow the user to continue to use the numeric keypad to type in the date/time? Or, better yet, why not allow for entering of the channel using the same mechanism for all of the rest of the inputs, and forego the use of the keypad altogether? The only reason for this oversight that I can think of was that of a deadline, and the designers did not have enough time finish project.