Memphis-inspired streaming box comes with a unique intersecting design to prevent remote loss

While the idea of losing a remote will pretty much still terrify anyone for the rest of their lives, the Pop Art TV Box has a uniquely creative solution – use someone’s OCD to combat their forgetfulness! With a unique design that has the TV’s remote intersecting with the TV’s hardware unit itself, the Pop Art relies on visual gestalt to complete itself. You’re much less likely to lose the remote, because you’re going to be compelled to dock it in its place once you’re done… sort of like how you dock a telephone receiver into its holder.

Designer: Shenzhen Skyworth Digital Technology

The Pop Art’s design borrows from the Memphis 2.0 and Bauhaus design styles, relying on simple geometric shapes and bold colors to create powerful compositions. The hardware duo features a square-shaped streaming box, with a cutout designed to dock the circular disc-shaped remote, allowing it to wirelessly charge when docked. “This recess serves as a visual cue for users to return the remote control to the charging dock when not in use. When the remote control is put back in place, the set-top box automatically shuts down to save power”, say the designers.

The Pop Art is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2022.

The post Memphis-inspired streaming box comes with a unique intersecting design to prevent remote loss first appeared on Yanko Design.

LAYER x Deutsche Telekom show how to hide tech in stylish home decor

Homes are getting more and more connected these days, mostly thanks to the new breed of Internet-connected devices scattered across the property. Many of these try to disguise themselves as part of your room’s interior design, like smart speakers that try to grab our visual and aural attention, but most of these devices are unapologetic in looking the part of a technical object. That doesn’t have to be the case, of course, and there are many ways to better integrate these devices into what look like everyday household objects and accessories. That’s exactly the proposal that Deutsche Telekom Design is making through LAYER, making interior design an integral part of the product’s design rather than an afterthought.

Designer: Benjamin Hubert (LAYER Design)

It’s not that difficult to spot devices and “smart appliances” inside a room. Even the smart speakers that try to be stylish and eye-catching don’t always blend well with their surroundings. And then there are devices that don’t even try to hide their presence and advertise their true nature. Routers and network meshes are the biggest culprits here, looking like alien structures inside an otherwise cozy abode, but set-top boxes and wireless speakers are sometimes just as bad.

This visual and design inconsistency is no small matter when it comes to creating a conducive atmosphere for your home. There are psychological consequences to visual clutter as well as the nagging feeling of not everything matching your desired aesthetics. Fortunately, that doesn’t have to be the case, especially with today’s technologies, materials, and manufacturing processes. That’s the kind of smart home that Deutsche Telekom is trying to present with this “eclectic family” of connected devices that look more like decor than tech products.

At the very top of that list is the router, which actually looks more like a desk mirror. In fact, it does function as one when the router’s display isn’t active. Even then, it only displays text rather than icons and images, making it a very minimalist piece of tech equipment. Joining it is a mesh repeater that masquerades as an upright wooden bowl decoration. They might even resemble some smart thermostats when hung on a wall, except without extraneous details and interfaces.

The set-top box/speaker does have telltale signs of an audio device, mostly due to the typical fabric-like surface that marks almost all speakers. Its minimalist design and text-based display, however, still make it a good candidate for interior design accessories. An interesting part of the product, however, is an accompanying webcam that’s no bigger than a can of tuna. There’s also a more typical set-top box that isn’t shaped like a box at all. Instead, it looks like a ceramic bowl that would be carefully put on display in the living room.

In addition to the designs themselves, this Home Harmony connectivity concept also tries to steer the ship towards more sustainable shores. Electronics are often made using plastics and unfriendly substances, but the use of wood, ceramic, and alternative materials will help make these objects not only blend in visually but also become a better part of people’s lives at home.

The post LAYER x Deutsche Telekom show how to hide tech in stylish home decor first appeared on Yanko Design.

This 4 input smart remote control + set top box’s interface speaks with each other!

Long and sweet, short, and cute; curvy and elegant, thin, and broad – remote controls are available in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and designs. They usually come paired with a new set of television but are also sold standalone for their charm, convenience, and elegance. Not many remotes really fall in that category but we can spare a thought for Tech4Home’s expertise in the domain. Now the brand has commissioned Pedro Gomes Design to conceive a cutting-edge remote control that offers a state-of-the-art user experience. And boy isn’t what the latter has pulled off worth grabbing instantly?

Tech4Home supplies remote controls to major brands worldwide. Now the idea here is to design a remote control and set-top box that is tailored to overcome the challenges in the content-driven interface. The solution is aesthetically appealing and almost unique in its own way yet apt to meet the evolving needs of worldwide Smart TV providers. This longish remote control has an ergonomic design, soft and welcoming shape that fills within the hand. It features a touchpad, a joystick, and also accepts gestures and voice commands. The accompanied round STB features detailing LEDs around its face and touch control buttons on the top. While the microphone on the remote lets you control the TV via voice, the touchpad allows you to swipe through menus very smoothly. Keeping in line with the present-day aesthetics of having your devices react to your commands, the remote’s interactive LED’s reacts to your voice command, and the action of the voice command is replicated on the set-top box’s LED’s – after all, getting a response to our actions is a basic pillar of our everyday communication.

In addition to offering four discrete ways to interact with the Smart TV – touch, button, voice, and gestures – the wirelessly chargeable remote and STB come meticulously packed to make a mass appeal.

Designer: Pedro Gomes Design for Tech4Home

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The Android Answer to the Set-top Box

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The Edge is Android’s answer to the set-top box. Users can connect to a treasure trove of content and entertainment from the comfort of home with one sleek, powerful package. Still awaiting details on performance, we can speak to its standout aesthetic that takes on an edgier form that its competitors. You won’t find any buttons or flashy logos, rather, this minimalistic rectangle sports only a single LED accent light that indicates its status. The remote control is equally void of frill but features at least twice as many buttons as an Apple TV. Of course, we’re not complaining because everyone knows just how tricky that remote can be to operate! With its simplistic UI and easy-to-operate control, its aim is to make the overall navigation and entertainment experience as seamless as possible.

Designer: Haoxiang Hu

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The main challenged faced in designing this product where achieving the balance between a broad market appeal and being able to be identifiable in a crowded market.

The TV box market is very crowded with very similar designs, small black boxes, this is because the industry is very conservative, and everyone just wants to fit in and be discrete. Conversely, a lot of broadcasters use images of their products to promote their service and therefore require a distinctive design.

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Another significant issue is that of cost. The cost of this type of consumer electronic product is heavily subsidised by the broadcaster and therefore costs need to be minimised to increase the rate of return on investment. At the same time a broadcaster will want to create an impression of quality consistent with their brand and therefore the design must appear to have a quality finish. Another factor in the cost is the cost of manufacture and assembly, the design needs to easy to produce and quick to assemble.

The final challenge is that the design must work as a functional piece of electronics, it needs to meet international safety and EMC regulations, it needs to have good Wi-Fi performance and it must not get too hot.

The challenges are then, it must look the same as everything else, but a bit different. The design must be cheap but look high quality and it needs to function reliably as a sophisticated piece of electronics.

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The design focuses on a simple minimal user interface, the removal of buttons and the reduction to one LED for status indication is a very different approach to broadcast box solutions. Previous generations of designs have tried to provide the user with full navigational control of the UI via the front panel and multiple status indicators duplicating the functionality of the remote control. By removing this duplication, the design is simplified, cost reduced and the poor UX of cheap buttons is removed. Tradition remote control designs have tried to use short cut keys to access different features of the UI, which has resulted in designs consisting of 40-50 buttons. The focus for the design UI has been moved to the remote control, where the intention is again to simplify and reduce. By reducing the number of buttons, the box UI can be made a lot more flexible and dynamic.

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