"Flick to tv" represents everything wrong with product design today

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The last sentence absolutely says it all. Great post.