sMoRTy71.com: Interview with TiVo's Director of UE

Interview with TiVo's Director of UE
PVRBlog has an interview with Margret Schmidt, TiVo's Director of User Experience. It covers "how TiVo's UI was originally developed, how new features are added, and how the sound UI came to be, among others."

I think one of the key things that Schmidt's team does (that other teams fail to do) is plan for the long-term. She says, "We try to design for the future (where we want to eventually take the feature) and then pare it down to what we are going to ship in a particular release. This lets us show how the experience will naturally evolve rather than having to radically change it to accommodate future functionality. We try to add to the experience rather than change it or take away something users rely on."

I've had my TiVo for over 3 years now and I still haven't found a better onscreen interface in any of the PVR software apps or cable set-top boxes I've seen. This interview is a great read for anyone interested in designing user interfaces.