In this post I will take a moment to reflect on some elements of the design of the Emerson remote control that came with the TV I currently use.

(1) and (2). The two buttons at (1) are the channel up / channel down buttons. The two buttons at (2) are the volume up / volume down buttons. I find these two sets of buttons unfortunately close to one another. Imagine the following: you are watching a dvd with your friends in a dimly lit room. Suddenly the sound gets unusually loud (fight scene) or awfully quiet (dramatic whispering). In either case the volume must be adjusted and quickly less you suffer hearing loss or miss plot developments. You recall the volume is on the right side of the remote. Is it the top or the bottom? You take a valiant stab, but alas, you've changed the channel and suddenly you are watching a local high school wrestling match in grainy home video! Cries of despair erupt about you. Not fun.

I think these buttons (which must be some of the most commonly used buttons on any remote) deserve space away from other buttons (not in the midst of a 6x4 rectangular grid) and definitely space away from one another.

(3) is the fast forward button. One click jumps a full scene, while holding down this button eventually causes the film to fastforward at a decent rate. This in my experience is also the source of sofa angst. Once the hero and heroine start moving in for the kiss, I'd like to keep moving, but I don't want to jump to the credit sequence. I think the scene jump and simple fast forward are different enough functionality to allow buttons of their own. Also, the time spent recovering from a skipped scene is non-trivial (and non-fun).

(4) is the pause button. This is not a big deal, but I'm used to the play/pause single button paradigm. I also expect (from prior experience) for the pause button to be closer to the play/stop/fastforward setup.

(5) Is the menu arrow buttons. This setup does not cause problems like some of the above issues, but I think these arrow buttons deserve their own real estate (like the play/stop buttons). Embedding in a grid of black buttons is the short path to desturction.

(6) These buttons, except for the down arrow button of (5), I have never used. I really have no idea what they do and yet I don't find myself wishing the remote could do more (just that it could do the basics better). I think removing these buttons would free up real estate for some of the changes suggested above and would lessen the clutter.

Thanks for reading!