Four Designs for Remote Controls

I’m following Gymnasium’s UX Design course. The homework for this is posted in markdown, so I thought: why not post it on this blog as well so as to preserve it. For the first assignment I sketched four designs for remote controls.

Sketch 1

This is an optimized design that’s still familiar to most people. Instead of opting for space efficiency, it keeps buttons separated into distinct blocks to help with muscle memory. The innovation here is that the up and down arrows of the navigation panel double as channel switching buttons. This way, there are only two sets of up and down arrows, the other one being for volume.

Sketch 2

This one is similar to the previous one. I couldn’t sketch this properly in time, but the intention is that a regular number panel doubles as a D-pad. Which functionality is provided depends on the context. Functions that are often needed are among the five buttons near the top, while everything else is in the bottom left.

Sketch 3

This remote is controlled by voice and/or a touch panel. All functionality should be provided by both. Furthermore, it doubles as a gamepad for use with the TV’s built in gaming functionality.

Sketch 4

The buttons were actually meant to be spread evenly among the remote, not left-aligned. You hold this remote horizontally and type in the name of the channel or show you want to watch. No need for those puzzling numbers.

Addendum

The challenge in this assignment lied in the fact that I had to work under pressure, having only four minutes to finish it. Having to think of designs on the spot caught me off guard. That being said, it’s good to be challenged and pushed to exercise your brain muscles. I really enjoyed it.