User Centered

Technical Communication/copy editing tip/nitpick:
Here's a half second's worth of confusion that could have been avoided if whoever would have wrote the show description didn't put in the first line of text:

On March 6...

(it was April 12).

I would rewrite as follows:

Live, Boston at Cleveland. Boston has a 2-1 season-series led after besting the Cavs on March 6 (105-94). The home team...

This way, the "lead" is describing and focusing on the the series, not a single game in the past...which may (if you're a very casual fan like I am) be confused with the live event. I watch "ESPN Classic" on occasion that has re-airings of old boxing matches and basketball games which include summaries that describe the past event that read like this image above. Of course this train of thought immediately terminated with: "man, they sure do have a loose definition of 'classic' these days."

dantesoft writes in with some thoughts on television volume...

Setting the volume to a confortable level (say 50%) during the show/programme still means fighting with the sound level when the ads come, which are almost always louder. And all, a different level of loud.

...and goes on to mention a TV set that was able to compensate and save the average volume for each channel(Great idea!). His ultimate point however is to avoid the minute adjustments needed in between commercials and while changing channels.

Since the commercials just came on as I type this and they are considerably louder than the program, I fully agree. I also wanted to point out that DVRs have been able to detect commercials for a long time now. Mind you, my last two DVR didn't adjust the volume, but I certainly wouldn't be surprised if other DVRs could do this. My old replayTV, and I'm sure just about ever homebrew or MythTV setup has "commercial advance" that used the fade-in/out, and I'm sure a host of other variations to detect when commercials were coming. I don't see why they can't adjust the volume appropriately in such instances.

My first Harmony experience was not all that great. Mainly because there is no technology that exists yet that will communicate the state of the devices back to the remote. So while the number one praise of the remote (from techies/home theater gurus) is that the significant other/babysitter can just pick it up and press a button- no more explanation is needed, it's easy to find out pretty quickly that that just isn't true.

There needs to be other explanations that end up being little more confusing than before, because they have to do with our (physical) habits. Now the user has to stay within the confines of the state that the remote expects the system to be in. In other words- we still have to be aware of the state of the system, because the system doesn't understand our quirks and habits. For example- when watching a DVD, I configured my remote to turn on the DVD player, switch the TV to video, and the receiver to DVD. Pretty simple, except that most of the time I've already turned the DVD player on to put the movie in. So, I tailor that activity to leave the DVD player alone only to find a case where I'd like it to power on. Of course, you can tweak the remote and control individual components, but when you take yourself out of the one button mindset, it's very noticible and more cumbersome.

The point here is that even if the owner understands what's going and can manage, what happens when the novice (ie, anyone not familiar with my home theater rig) comes along and the owner bills this as "just press the button" and it doesn't work? There's a tremendous amount of distrust in the system from then on. Especially since there's not likely to be a set of "fall back" instructions. More importantly, trading a verbal instructions like "just press this button than this button...." for "DON'T turn the DVD player on before you press anything, the system will take care of that for you..." will probably go against some habit the user already has for "settling down" to watch/listen to something.

Regardless, I bring this up because there is a new model out (the 550) which is around 150 dollars (review,official page). I think I'm going to throw my hat in the ring again with this model. Despite those problem I have, I think the idea is the way to go, and the value of it will far outweigh any negative disparity. The price point is slightly more than the lowest-end model (which is *still* incredibly high)- I figure this is going to replace the aging 600 series. So- a "do-able" price that mixes with a fresh design along with my need for a good universal remote. Conclusion? I'm willing to give Logitech a second chance with my consumer dollars.

Background/Old News: Harmony (Logitech) remotes are "activity centered" remotes that have the right idea when it comes to using your home theater devices. For those uninitiated, you can press a "watch tv" button and all your devices will switch and adjust themselves appropriately- sparing you the trouble of hitting video twice on one remote, change to channel three, select the "TV" setting on the receiver and so on and so forth. Read Donald Norman on "Activity Centered Design" for more information on the Harmony and this approach.

I have Charter MOXI DVR for my primary TV which is quite decent (I'll do a review on that soon)- but in my bedroom I have the standard digital cable box. Pressing guide on the remote gives me this:


Why do users click on the "guide" button? To see what's on TV perhaps? How much of this screen is dedicated to helping the user find out what's on TV? Roughly a quarter of the screen.

You'll note is that there are advertisements there. Who thought it was good idea to put ads that big in the navigation UI? There is like a quarter of the screen that actually shows what's on TV. I mean- why even have a guide menu at all? They have a TV guide ad there- but the guide on the screen is nothing like TV Guide. you can't easily see at a glance what is coming up next on a channel.

The whole top center of the screen is not even used.

Thanks for taking up the big chunk of space to advertise yourself. I'm already paying you Charter. Your logo shows up on my bill every month.

The channel titles ("44 VH1") takes about half of the screen space as the program playing!

Perhaps most frustrating is that sometimes when I hit the guide button- it seems to forget what channel I'm on and default to showing me the listings on channel 2 and I have find my way back to where I was.

This is the most useless guide I have ever seen. I think it's desiged like this on purpose to get you to upgrade to DVR service.

Not that I'm saying the Ads are alright with me- but if you can't beat em- join em:
Reduce the Charter logo and TV Guide logo- put both on right, move the two ads to the top of the screen one where the charter logo is, and other to the right). Remove the brown bar surrouing the TV channel/names and move to the far left and show us what's coming up next (Guide view) on the channel. Remove the "get latest" on the bottom.

Finally- get a DVR.