A perfect example of how a product’s experience can be severely damaged by a feature-centric approach instead of a narrative one.

Thanks to Alok, I had the opportunity to get my hands on the new Philips “Living Color” line of LED lamps. He asked for some insight for a similar, yet much more interesting, project of his called Arkalumen.
Here is the beast:

The lamp has an adventurous design, it actually looks like a mix of a harman/kardon speakers and a jelly fish made of (very) cheap plastic. It is quite ugly and feels terribly awkward, but this is not my point.

My point is the remote control (yeah, I don’t like them) and how the user experience has been contaminated by engeneer thinking.

From top to bottom here are the controls: On/Off toggle, color wheel, color saturation (in the center of the wheel), and brightness.

All graphic artists know that a color can be defined using different formulas. A very useful one is called HSB (Hue, Saturation, Brightness), it is quite easy to understand yet a bit abstract for people (consumers) who legitimately don’t give a damn.

Yet, Philips engineers really figured out that the HSB formula would be the best way to go, and they designed an interface (the remote) to give access to the full spectrum of colors, shades and intensity the lamp is able to produce.

They probably thought that the mere possibility of lightning our living room with an infinite variety of colors is the greatest thing in the world, and it worths being familiar with the HSB concept.

What can we learn from this?

1st: tech specs must be carefully insulated from the user experience to propose real useful features.

2nd: features must be infered from real-life narratives, never from spec sheets.

Philips’ flawed narrative is: “A lamp able to produce every color in the world”. As if we craved the possibility of illuminating our rooms with an infinite palette of colors. As if we were even able to choose a suitable color from a million possibilities (too much choice is an embarassment, “less” is always better than “more”). And eventually: as if light equals color!

A much better narrative would be: “A lamp able to produce every kind of light“, and by “light” I mean the “quality” of light: warmth, coldness, softness, hardness, etc. All the qualities we, human beings, are attaching to the concept of light and the importance they have on our moods and biological rythms.

If Philips had applied this narrative, they would have produced something more inovative, yet closer to our humanity, and much simpler to operate.

Epilogue. As for the remote control, please, no more of that useless c**p ! We are already wasting our evenings looking for the damn TV remote! Now one remote for each lamp in the house? Nooo! Try this instead!