This is the second in a series of posts describing some of the projects we would love to work on. As a holistic digital design firm, Jackson Fish Market is very fortunate to have really bright clients come to us with super interesting projects on a regular basis. But rather than wait for them to come to us, we figured we might let the world know which projects we’d love to work on. Each of these ideas is something we’re passionate about. And for each we have a deep set of ideas to help make them a reality. So if one of these is something you’re thinking about, call us. We’d love to help.

I think a lot of designers, sit back at the end of the day, turn on the television, and fantasize about redesigning the interface to their television. And while there are certainly challenges and opportunities when it comes to remote control of all the devices and services that connect to our televisions, that is not the are on which we would like to focus with this effort.

This effort would be about improving remote control of televisions in one simple yet profoundly important dimension — responsiveness.

I have personally probably used three dozen different remotes over the last decade or two. These include remotes for: DirecTV, Comcast, XBOX, Windows Media Center, AppleTV, Samsung televisions, Roku, Boxee, soft Remotes on iPhone and Android devices, and more. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, I’m not talking about the ability for these remotes to render themselves gracefully on large and small screens. I’m talking about old school responsiveness. You press a button, and the thing you wanted to happen, happens instantly.

This may seem like a simple problem. From determining the right technology to wirelessly connect the remote to its target device, to making sure the device can render the results fast enough, there are many little details needed to make sure this happens properly. And yet, for some reason, when it comes to television especially, the gap between when you press a button and when something happens on screen is maddeningly long. You could recite an epic poem in that gap in some cases.

The set-top boxes we hook up to our televisions are so much more powerful these days than the fastest computers of yesteryear and yet, when we want to change a channel, they plod along. This is a thorny design problem, but there are many techniques that can be used to speed up the actual and perceived response of the device to the remote. We would employ all of these to create a tv watching experience that’s as instantly responsive and satisfying as it is to manipulate something with your fingertip on your touchscreen device.

If you’re looking to create something like this, and would like an excited team to help you design the identity, the hardware, the software, and the marketing experiences, don’t hesitate to let us know.