Intuitive user interface industrial design is the most important factor in any multiroom audio system. If the control isn't blatantly obvious then the consumer will not use it. It must do what they expect every time. Nothing helps set the mood in a space like music. This fact is well understood by professionals who design restaurants, bars and retail spaces. Why not enjoy music in your home, anywhere, anytime at the touch of a button? All this can be achieved without cluttering up your rooms visually, or physically, with stacks of electronics, wires and speakers. This is the magic of whole house music.

When I started in the industry over twenty years ago there where very few companies manufacturing "custom audio" equipment or systems. Source components were not easily remotely controlled; in fact there were no IR remotes yet. A few components even had "wired" remotes! Most systems consisted of control boxes with many relays and heavily modified source equipment. Each room typically had an auto-former volume control or an L-PAD based attenuator. There were also very few installation companies that could put these systems in. Many jobs were either done by the manufacturer themselves or by commercial contractors.

Fast forward twenty years… Our industry has matured considerably since those early days. Systems have become much more sophisticated. Manufacturers of source equipment must consider the custom market when they design their products. They understand that they need to have robust and complete IR control codes. Most provide control triggers where appropriate. However we are still a long way from standards.

Most cities now have several custom audio video installation companies. There are many manufacturers making multi-source systems and this creates healthy competition. This is good news for you the consumer as systems have become less expensive, easier to operate and more reliable.

The key to making all this work is a well-designed user interface. Every member of the family needs to be able to operate the system quickly and easily. The keypads also need to be aesthetically pleasing to blend in with the home's interior design. Not all systems have well thought out user interfaces though, and this turns consumers off.

In this article, I want to shed some light into the process of designing an audio video control keypad. This study in ergonomics is a complex and challenging task yet an exciting one for the design team.

When designing the new UNO keypad line, we embarked on a very methodical journey. We enlisted the help of one of the industry's most talented product designers, Allen Boothroyd of Cambridge Product Design Ltd. Allen is not only an industrial designer but also the co-founder of Meridian, one of the industry's audio, video and digital technology leaders for many years. Allen brought a fresh professional perspective to this project and helped us achieve our design goals.

Our biggest challenge was to take the very complicated and subjective job of ergonomic design and break it up into a manageable process with several small steps. Here are ten, progressive steps we took during the design process:

1. First, our design team made a list of the source equipment we wanted to control. We then made sure this list included things like media servers and other emerging media sources. Of course the usual Tuner, CD, multi-CD, DVD and cable boxes were included.

2. Then we researched what functions consumers want to be able to control from the keypad for each unique component. A list of control functions was created for each type of source equipment.

3. This list was prioritized. During this stage it was just as important to decide what not to put on the keypad! Every function you include can potentially obscure the more basic often used functions. To the extreme a volume control has one function: Adjust the volume of the music. Everybody knows how to operate a volume control.

4. We determined what feedback we need to provide to the user to instill confidence. From this we designed the display for each keypad. The largest UNO keypad (See above) which fits in a double gang electrical box with a double Decora wall plate, has 12 alpha-numeric characters (5 on the single gang), 5 special function messages (2 on the single gang), and a volume and tone indication bar. These elements give us the ability to keep the user fully informed of system and zone status.

5. The minimum number of buttons required to achieve the control we wanted were determined. It was important to remember that each button you add to the keypad adds more complexity and confusion for the user. Also as you add more buttons they become closer together and smaller. This makes them more difficult to operate. We surveyed the audio keypads on the market and felt many of them had too many buttons.

6. Then we proceeded to assign functions to each button. We put together a matrix with source equipment, functions and button icons.

7. Next we looked at button sizes, shapes and layout. These subtle details can affect how intuitive the keypad is to operate.

8. We worked with our sales representatives, key dealers and even potential consumers, to test market our designs and make some small adjustments.

9. Fully functional "virtual keypads" were created on the computer that could be operated and put through the paces as we developed the keypad software. This allowed us to Beta test our user interface program assumptions with emulation software and make changes quickly.

10. The final easy step was determining what standard colors we would offer. These are color matches for standard switch plates. We will offer white, bone, almond, black and brown.

The end result of all of this research was what we feel is the industry's most intuitive keypad. It is all about balancing simplicity of operation that a novice requires with enough features to give the enthusiast the control they want.

An industry leader like Russound is often asked how we think distributed audio systems will change in the future? We believe, The next big wave, will be the further integration of computers, home networks and the media content and delivery. Many homes are being pre-wired with home networking structured wiring panels and Ethernet everywhere. We are starting to see more affordable media servers coming to market with streaming Ethernet based distribution and control. The consumer will be able to call up media content from any computer in the house. I firmly believe that consumers will still want properly engineered hard wired keypads for control and we will continue to apply our expertise in user interfaces to these systems. It's like a light switch, you walk into a room and without looking, you can flip on the music. At the end of the day it's all about the music ……

Andy Lewis , Director of Product Development and Technology at Russound

Andy has more than twenty years of professional experience in the design of high-end Audio Video custom distribution products. As Russound's head of product development, he is currently working with their design and engineering team on the very latest in technology for distributing high quality audio and video throughout a home. With the vast amount of technical resources available at Russound, and with his vision on user centric designs, there is little doubt that we will see some incredible audio video devices in the very near future from Russound.

Prior to joining Russound Andy was the General Manager of B&W Loudspeakers Custom Audio Group. Under Andy's direction, the Group created several custom audio products and worked very closely with B&W's dealers and distributors developing the custom market for the B&W brand. Andy's first job in the custom business was with Audio Design Associates in NY back in 1982. Andy Lewis can be reached at Russound in Newmarket, NH, 1-603-659-5170 or email at andyl@russound.com