Joymote

A pro­ject from my un­der­grad­u­ate stud­ies, Joymote is a sim­pli­fied tele­vi­sion re­mote.

The de­sign goals, in­formed by a user study, were:

• Support com­mon func­tions, no no more
• Little or no la­belling re­quired
• Should be learn­able by pick­ing it up and try­ing
• Usable in a dark room

The de­sign process con­sisted of sketch­ing and pro­to­typ­ing to de­velop form and ma­te­ri­als, 3D mod­el­ling, sto­ry­board­ing, and an in­ter­ac­tive mock-up. A short eval­u­a­tion with prospec­tive users was con­ducted with a Wizard of Oz ap­proach us­ing a form pro­to­type.

Joymote has a flat­tened spher­i­cal shape, al­most disc like. A light-up logo is on one end, and the form con­sists of two halves which can be twisted.

Twisting the halves change vol­ume, with the lit logo pro­vid­ing feed­back and help­ing you to find it in the dark. Tilting the Joymote left or right cy­cles chan­nels in the on-screen menu, and tilt­ing the con­trol back to its start­ing ori­en­ta­tion se­lects the chan­nel. Shaking turns the TV on or off.