It's so simple, so very simple, that only a child can do it

The above quote from Tom Lehrer, who was singing about New Math is one of those perverse truths we have to live with as adults. Children are very effective learning machines and can quickly learn and work out how to control the most complex of devices. When I was a child, it was the digital watch, with its four buttons do everything design. I could reverse engineer the operating instructions of any digital watch in seconds (how eighties is that!?).

The one thing any technophobe will admit to you is that they do not know how to set the timer on their video. There has to be a reason for this. It's probably the same reason that has prevented me from ever learning how to set the clock on my stereo, and the same reason that has prevented me from ever using the VideoPlus features on my own video... they just seem to obscure to be bothered with. Plus, if you ever do follow the instructions and try to learn how to control these devices, you find that the sequence of operations is too long to remember, or too badly described to fathom out.

To add insult to injury, a lot of the hardest to use devices come with remote controls that are over complicated and incomprehensible. At some stage, I ought to write about remote control sins in general, but for today, let's focus on why my neighbour failed to grasp the so-called basic operation of his Sharp video recorder. Let me stress that I put no blame on the user here; this is a man who can operate a wide variety of electronic and electrical devices. The steep learning curve is entirely the fault of the designer.

Here are some of the problems with the neighbour's Sharp video recorder's remote control and user interface:

• The remote control is COVERED in buttons, in different colours, shapes and sizes. They are able to control virtually all of the features of the machine. This immediately makes the controller difficult to learn and also increases the chance of doing something bizarre to the video by accident during normal operation.
• The remote control has controls for a television on it. A compatible Sharp TV can be operated with this controller. This would be useful if the neighbour had a Sharp TV, instead, he has some redundant buttons.
• The buttons are of various types and purposes:
  
  • Bang buttons - do something, like start playing the tape.
  • Function buttons - enter some sort of mode. These can sometimes be pressed once to leave the mode, sometimes you need to press several times to cycle through related modes.
  • Game-pad style cursor keys - 4 directions, can be used in the on-screen menu system, in conjunction with some surrounding buttons like Set and Menu. Fairly useful, but buried among a sea of other buttons, and not used universally.
  • Arrow keys - for changing channels (why the cursor keys could not do this too eludes me).
  • Number keys - which can be used in one of two modes:
    
    • Single press - change the channel to the single-digit channel you hit
    • Two-digit - either within menu options when you need to enter numbers or during normal operation to change the video channel, provided you've turned on the two-digit channel entry mode. Two digit channel entry stops you entering a single digit channel unless you prefix it with 0 - there's no time delay after hitting the first digit that decides you only want a single digit channel (as you'd find on most devices).
    You only know which mode you are in based on the state of two small segments of LED display on the front of the video machine.

I'm not making this up. I've not misinterpreted the complexity of the user interface. The neighbour accidentally hit two buttons on the control and was unable to work out how to get any channels and how to get rid of a, basically unnecessary, display that had appeared over his picture!

We get suckered by unnecessary features. The new video recorder disappointed my neighbour because its eject feature was not available from the remote control, as it was on his last one. Why should the eject ever be on the remote control? you have to be at the unit to make any use of an ejected tape... the remote control should not have features designed for nearby use - they're redundant. Unfortunately, you get used to things. Sometimes I wish we could start again and redesign completely - set a worthwhile standard!

27 April 2001
Ashley Frieze