
"Flick to tv" represents everything wrong with product design today - blasdel
http://fuckjetpacks.com/read/flick_to_tv_represents_everything_wrong_with_product_design_today
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mdonahoe
3 years ago, I made a prototype for LG of a social remote control. It allowed
anyone in the room with a web browser (including smart phones) to send videos
to the tv. It was great for group tv watching, since it gives everyone the
ability to search simultaneously for a video, instead of instructing the one
guy with the remote where to go.

Anyway, LG wasnt interested until I made a super gimmicky way of sending
videos to the tv instead of using a button. You held your phone up to the tv,
and it would transfer.

Concept Demo: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETRwc7B_NNc>

This limited it to apps instead of web browsers and was less reliable. But it
was slightly cooler than pressing a button.

It distracted them from the whole point of my idea though. They just wanted a
cool remote control they could sell with their tvs.

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confluence
Why not start with the really awesome remote control - and move toward your
final idea?

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mdonahoe
Selling a specialized device for tv watching undermines the purpose of my
social remote idea. Your friends wont have one, so they can't participate as
easily as they could if it was a webapp.

I suppose you could buy 4 of them, like I (an only child) did with Nintendo 64
controllers so that my friends could always play.

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acgourley
Most gesture controls fit in this category of jetpack design, too.

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eyevariety
The ipad app switching/closing/task bar gestures are pretty natural though.
See them once and they are unforgettable.

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acgourley
actually I totally agree - I meant 3d gestures with hands in space, not
multitouch.

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notatoad
What is this referring to? Is there an actual product that allows you to flick
to TV and provides no other UI for that functionality?

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RossDM
Not sure how this relates to the real world experience, but there's a Samsung
Phone TV ad that shows a businessman flicking his presentation onto the
conference screen.

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uptown
Samsung has two commercials airing currently with new forms of interaction ...
might be the Galaxy S3 (I'm not sure). One example shows the user dismissing a
call by speaking to the phone while a call is coming in. The other commercial
shows that you can take a screen-shot by waving your hand over the device
whenever - kind of ironic since screenshots from Android devices was always a
pain back when I owned one.

Maybe they both work flawlessly - I don't know, but both seem like they could
easily misfire when you intended to do something completely different with
your device.

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Indyan
I have an S3, and the screenshot thing is actually very neat and handy. It is
a bit wonky when you try to capture apps with scrollable windows, but it never
misfires. You have to basically press the side of your palm on the screen and
move it from left to right.

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draftable
The author should really let the reader know what this is in response to.
Having never seen the ad nor heard of "Flick to TV" makes and otherwise good
article kind of hard to relate to.

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ripperdoc
He is simply listing the challenges any designer would face to make a simple
yet obvious feature that just works. It is NOT describing a reason to "go back
to buttons" or do something in the traditional way. This is where home
electronics need to go - where you can interact with them directly instead
through some button interface. If I direct my phone at the TV, both the phone
and the TV should know that this is happening and depending on context, do
something or offer a choice. Another example is touching your phone to your
computer, etc.

The challenge, apart from making the design intuitive, is for the devices that
take part in this form of interaction to understand the intent of the user.

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Evbn
What is wrong with having the user say what they want? My microwave doesn't
popup open the door and grab what I am holding whenever I pass food in front
of it, and that is fine.

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rayiner
If the gesture is intuitive and simple, it can be much more efficient than a
button and reduce cognitive load by eliminating symbolic abstraction.

A great example is browsing in Safari. Scrolling, zooming, and going
back/forward with gestures is far more efficient than explicitly pressing
buttons to do the same actions.

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smartkids
Solution: Let these interface gimmicks be the stuff of tech conventions and
demos, and never part of any mass-produced product.

But maybe some marketing folks, seeing the success of Apple, have reasoned
that these gimmicks can sell products in the short-term, at least until
consumers discover the problems with them.

At the end of this era of tapping and rubbing little screens with our fat,
dirty fingers, we may be reminded why we had tactile interfaces to begin with.
What ever happened to the PDA stylus?

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feverishaaron
Constantly fumbling with; forgetting or losing the PDA stylus – happened to
the PDA stylus.

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mdonahoe
The other thing removing the stylus did was force the software to go in a
completely different direction.

With a fat finger, the ui can't look and work the same as mouse driven ui as
it could with a stylus.

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eyevariety
Great little post and totally true. Related, the Airplay implementation is a
good example of restraint in interaction design. Airfoil does much more, but
it isn't as natural or easy to grok as Apple's implementation.

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adaml_623
People always use the example of all cars having the same basic controls when
they are talking about patents. But they normally forget to mention that there
was a lot of experimentation with different control layouts and systems before
a default was established. It took decades (I think) but that's how good ideas
can come to the front.

Experimentation in the marketplace is not a sin. Sometimes designers cannot
figure out the best solutions before shipping.

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sgdesign
I think you always need a phase of experimenting new ideas before people find
out what works and what doesn't. Ideally, those failed experiments would stay
in-house and never reach the market, but it's not always easy to know which
ideas are good...

So anyway, since you never know what might eventually come out of it, I'm
personally grateful for the existence of "flick to tv" gimmicks.

As long as I don't have to use them myself, of course.

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akldfgj
Blogger team needs to read this article and rethink their "flick to change
article" UX travesty.

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julius707
Just because you need to a higher learning curve, doesn't mean it's wrong.

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vetler
I'm struck by the negativity of the post. While the arguments listed are valid
user interface design points, the "flick to TV" just works (assuming you have
the right hardware), and it's pretty simple. If you wanted to get everything
correct, you'd probably end up with a more normal user interface with buttons
and whatnot, plus you'd spend more time developing it to get it right
according to how you're supposed to be doing it.

Instead, they went out and developed a neat little feature that yes, has its
problems, but it works and it's a little more innovative than a button-based
interface.

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shahidhussain
Unless you're busy making or avoiding patents, I'd argue that the
innovativeness of a feature shouldn't be a factor unless it works better than
the normal solution.

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iamdave
The last sentence absolutely says it all. Great post.

