Design Challenge

The problem was to design an interface for a high-definition television. The hypothetical appliance, in addition to being a TV, would also be an mp3 player, DVD player, game player, and have email and instant messenger capabilities. The challenge was to combine the selection of the function into one uniform method.

Design Solution

My team’s approach was to be minimalist based on the assumption that the selection of a function is secondary to the person’s primary task of watching TV or listening to music. Therefore, we made our design as unobtrusive as possible and accessible through minimal use of the remote control.

We created a “generator” in the bottom left of the screen which scrolled through the available functions. The user selected the function and then selected where on the screen that function would appear. The user could select the function or the intended location first. The user would repeat this method to place as many as 4 functions on the screen and would have the flexibility to remove functions from the screen or switch between the full screen or tiled format.