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Last week our old DVD player stopped working, and we decided it was time for a technological quantum leap.

So I ordered this DVD/harddisk recorder: Amitech 736 with all the right buzzword features:

• DVD player/recorder
• Built-in harddisk (I ordered the 250GB version)
• Digital tuner as a supplement to the analog tuner (better quality of recordings)
• One touch recording of programs
• Timer controlled programs
• Good looking

Features vs user experience

While the feature list was just what we needed, I wanted to put it in context with how it’s used in our home. The DVD is primarily for my 3 year old son Victor, so he can watch Bob the Builder, Koala Brothers, Postman Pat, Noddy, Curious George, etc., and occasionally cartoons recorded from morning television.

DVDs in the hands of a 3 year old get worn and it would fit perfect to copy DVDs to the harddisk. Most important feature! Second, to record the programs like Mickeys Clubhouse (broadcast in Denmark only Sunday morning, but could come in handy every afternoon if my wife and I wanted to calm Victor’s temper after a long day in kindergarden). Second most important feature: Record from TV.

But what always surprises me is that features are nothing: It’s how the features are executed. The user experience is very important to me (I’m a usability geek, of course). But as an end-user in this case, i found the following astonishing findings after the first weekend’s use:

First weekend, many wasted remote control presses

• Uses 25 seconds for startup. I can’t even eject the cd tray and load a dvd before the software is ready for taking my orders. Also there is no signal transmitted to the TV before everything is up and running.
   
• The harddisk is audible and makes me want to turn off the dvd recorder as much as possible. There is some kind of vibration noise that gets amplified by the (wood) shelf that the recorder is standing on. I’m trying now to put it on a silencer mat (magic fleece) I had to order in Germany. Dont know if it will work, but I’m now spending 16EUR to find out. I’d rather waste the money than live with the noise from the harddisk. Ideally, Amitech should of course use low-noise harddisks AND use a vibration damper that prevents harddisk vibration to move through the cabinet and down to the shelf. And of course some vibration-damping pads under the box.
   
• I tried to record some cartoons with the timer Sunday morning. Only Bananas in Pyjamas succeeded. (I recorded that as a non-repeating timer. The two other programs (Mickeys Clubhouse and Lazytown) dissappeared. They were set up as “weekly repeated” timed recordings. I suspect that the machine never recorded them. I can’t find them anywhere in the menu.
   
• No public forum for the product. So I can’t see, if anybody else have had the problems I’m experiencing.
   
• Not possible for me (yet) to record a DVD to the harddisk (not even when following the manual — Danish link). According to the manual I’m supposed to select the DVD at one point in the menu just next to the harddisk, but it’s not there. I have no clue if it’s me who’s looking the wrong place or something else? Could it be that the dvd’s are copyright protected? At least the system should tell me and show a disabled possibility.
   
• Different ways of naming recordings: One place, there is a keyboard for entering text, but some other places I have to use only up/down arrows for writing. (And here, the space bar is placed illogical after all lower-case letters, not before.)
   
• Channel numberings are strange: The two tuners are managed differently, so you have to set up channels for the analog tuner independently of the digital tuner and vice-versa. Each has in my case the numbers 1-4 in the setup menus. This makes it kind of a voodo-like experience using the channels outside of the setup. And result on my remote control: Channel 1 and 2 is actually the same channel (digital DR1), for some reason.
   
• Slow reactions to channel changes. We have only 5-6 channels at home. Whenever I press a number on the remote control it reacts slowly. For instance, I press “4”, and a status display appears on screen telling me which channel I a shifting away from. Approx. 1 second later it shifts to the new channel.
   
• The manual is written very feature-centric and not really user-centered. For instance, there are separate chapters on how to setup and manage channels on the digital and analog tuner. Ideally, there should only be one way to manage channels, regardless of if it’s digital or analog.
   
• After 3 days I’m able to use the following features without consulting the manual
  • play a dvd
  • watch digital channels
  • timeshift a tv-recording (I had to consult the manual to learn howto, though)

   

• I’m still not able to
  • Record a DVD to the harddisk
  • Record a TV program via the timer
  • Record a TV program directly

   

• Worst experience yet: My thumbs hurt. All the searching around in the menus. The timer programs I meticulously named but were never recorded. The searching for programs and features that I could not find.

How this could be improved

As you can understand, all of this is software-related issues. I’m very confident that the user experience can be heavily improved, and software can be updated, because actually, this is a very nice product with some good features, and it deserves to be used. Many eletronic products are simply put aside and not used. Videos with blinking 00:00 clocks that people never put the effort into update.What I really want to do here is not to criticize unconditionally, but to suggest some ways to improve the product. So with a colleague we plan to spend some evenings next months to come up with our own menu design. Furthermore, I hope that this can start a dialog with Amitech that can help them improve the product so that it works better for me in the context that I use it for.

The main areas for usability improvements:

• Menus should be reworked so that the functionality and the features are present and obvious at the right points in the the context of use.
• The content of the manual.
• Make features more self-explanatory, and make it easier to use the many features without consulting the manual.

Please use the comments here, if you have found any issues that you want to share, and also let me know which context you use it in. Also let me know if there are things here that is not important to you, and if there is other stuff that is much more important in your use of the product.

Feature list is cool, but user experience is more than feature lists. This hopefully will show, that user experience can be improved and hopefully in the future can sell products more easily.

Technorati Tags: user experience, usability, dvd, recorder, harddisk, amitech

This entry was posted by Jesper Rønn-Jensen on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 at 11:46 (GMT-1) and is filed under User experience, User Interface. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.