Tivo love and the New York Times

Via TV Tattle, this New York Times article discusses the design decisions and experimental efforts that went into the Tivo remote. It includes a quote from Jakob Nielsen calling the big yellow pause button "the most beautiful pause button I've ever seen."

Because of the nature of the TiVo video recorder, the remote is held for long periods as users continually choose shows to record, skip commercials, fast-forward and rewind recorded shows, rate programs by pressing the thumbs-up or thumbs-down buttons, and even pause live TV. Designing a remote that consumers would find comfortable was a high priority.

Central to the process, Mr. Newby said, was producing prototypes "early, ugly and often."

I'd love to see the discarded prototypes.

Incidentally, while the NY Times' long-standing practice of making articles disappear behind the paywall has irritated blogreaders and search engine users for years, there is now a workaround. Old articles are available for blog partners if a valid partner code is in the referring URL. If you link to the NYT, make it easy on yourself by running the URL through Aaron Swartz's New York Times Link Generator.

Speaking of newspapers that demand registration, the login/password combination bselig/bselig will get you into any online paper that I've tried. (And if you find one where it doesn't work, register it, so it works for the next person!)