flatter

It was the time of year, and the obligatory visit to the largest consumer electronics trade show was on schedule. For many years, I have paid a visit to this temple of electronic gadgets, and along with me many colleagues and former colleagues in design. And every year, the industry leaders and those who want to push the big ones from their thrones meet up to showcase to the world what they are capable of and how much better they are than the competition.

Across all those years, one product has taken center stage at the show: the television!

For us designers, there is always something we can improve, even on televisions, though they have become essentially flat. In the past, when they were still bulky and heavy, the main job of the designer was to make the product look competent, technical, and jet-dynamic, but not like a blob of plastic. Up to you to decide if we achieved anything good.

But with the arrival of the flat panel, this effort was reduced to mere nothing: flat, slim, light, and invisible are the characteristics of the new design lines on show. Panels, with which the consumer is watching television less and less but is still being entertained, can browse the internet and are provided with “apps”! The product itself is dematerializing more and more, focusing only on the screen… And then I discovered it (or her, or him?), by chance and totally unexpectedly, because it was carefully tucked away, or it was just left out everywhere – the remote control!

The remote has become a rare guest in the booth: it seems that no manufacturer really cares to give the part of the television on which everything is focused a prominent place. Specifically now, with flat, slim televisions hardly having room to place a decent button, the remote is more important than ever! And now, where we are not zapping up and down the channels any longer, but are connected to the worldwide web, we need the remote more than ever. But why were there no remotes on display?

Maybe there is a simple reason: show visitors with plastic bags tend to have sticky fingers and nick them, or they start to fiddle with the fine-tuning of the sets, so the exhibitors leave them out? Or maybe brands are ashamed that, despite all the effort put into minimizing the set, they ran out of money when it came to minimizing the interaction between the user and the set? Or might it even be that they used the budget left to purchase one cheap remote ‘overseas’, in order to toss it into the box just in time before the television was packed up for shipment? “Honi soit qui mal y pense”.

The fact is that good-looking, easy-to-use, and qualitatively well-built remotes were hard to find, and that, mostly, upon request, they turned out as grey, dull, button-covered plastic blobs. A few exceptions.

What made me positive was the clear insight some manufacturers showed by offering the matching app for their flat TVs, free to download. Also, I would rather display my iPad on the couch table than a blob of grey plastic! But, isn’t the television then mutating into an accessory for smartphones, which belong to the generation digital? What will happen to all those professional televiewers without an iProduct, like my aunt Gerda?

So, therefore, thy Television-makers: If there is hardly any material used on the sets you make, please free up the budget and put it in decent remotes – not only my aunt will be grateful!