Following the initial launch of the SoundTouch speakers, which featured a straightforward hand-held remote, our marketing team sought to enhance user experience with a premium accessory. They tasked our Research team with generating innovative ideas to simplify content access.

I was invited and joined a collaborative meeting with colleagues from User Research and the Design Center, where we began brainstorming potential solutions.

The original remote was small and nondescript. One foundational idea we quickly embraced was the creation of an easy-to-use, centerpiece remote control designed to be prominently placed on a coffee table, side table, near a light switch, or even magnetically attached to a refrigerator door—always within easy reach.

In addition to its accessible form factor, this remote would display metadata to inform users about what they were listening to. We also envisioned a more tactile and precise volume control, featuring a rotary encoder dial for fine-grained adjustments.

The image above shows some of the important notes and sketches that I made I had that day.

• Six preset buttons around a rectangular screen but hidden with a smoked lens to hide the screen boundaries.
• A center area to display text and icons in a monochrome color to keep unit pricing down. Perhaps
• The ability to peek into other station content with a touch before a press.
• A volume ring around the outside edge of the remote to allow for elegant volume adjustment.
• The center area should function as play/pause control - the entire top functioning as a button.
• Since stations were mostly streaming, and for the sake of simplicity, fast-forward and rewind were not represented.

Without existing hardware or software, I took on the task of creating the UI once we finalized the design and direction. We sketched various screens to ensure we displayed the right amount of information. It was decided that since the controller would be small enough to fit on an iPad screen at a 1:1 scale, I could use one to prototype. Perfect.

Some digital interface sketches of various application states.

I then collaborated with the assigned industrial designer to craft a realistic top-down image representing the hardware on the iPad screen. With that in place, I coded a simulation with presets of local audio content to mimic a real user's collection. We tested a single preset, a full set, and all possible gestures to drive the system. Additionally, we explored error states, experimental features like station peeking, and extended presets with six banks of six presets each.

While the actual hardware was being prototyped and iterated upon, we refined the entire interaction model independently from the hardware. This approach exponentially accelerated the development process.