Case Study: DISH 54.0 Remote Redesign
Role: Persona creation, UX Design, UX Research, UI Design, Graphic Design, Prototyping
The Problem
For this school assignment, we had to redesign a physical product. Our team conducted UX research and evaluation on Dish Network's newest remote control model at the time (2022) – the Dish 54.0. This feature-packed remote aims to deliver convenience through voice commands, remote finders, and customizable buttons. However, through a combination of user surveys, interviews, usability testing, and heuristic evaluations, we uncovered critical usability issues impacting customer experience.
The Goals
After conducting thorough UX research and analysis on the Dish 54.0 remote, our team identified several clear goals to guide the redesign:
Simplify and streamline navigation and flows. Based on usability testing, over 50% of users struggled with completing basic tasks due to confusing menus and navigation. Key flows like setting a recording or accessing custom button features need to be simplified.
Establish a clear, consistent mental model. Violations of core heuristics indicate users are unable to form an accurate mental model of how the system works. The redesign must use clear signifiers, structures, and language so users can intuitively understand how to operate the remote.
Improve critical pain points. Key user complaints centered around unintuitive symbols (e.g. the "diamond" button), confusing labeling (e.g. the "Recall" function), and accidental button presses. Addressing these through the redesign will directly resolve user friction points.
These goals drove all design decisions. By focusing the redesign on simplification, clarity, and resolution of key pain points, we hoped to improve the overall user experience.
The Process
Conducting User Research & Usability Testing
We kicked off the Dish 54.0 redesign with comprehensive user research, including surveys, interviews, and usability testing. Surveys with 11 participants uncovered usage patterns, liked features, and pain points. Interviews and usability testing with 4 participants where participants performed simple tasks with the remote revealed areas of confusion and difficulty around navigation and key tasks. This research exposed clear issues to address.
Usage Findings:
45.5% of participants reported their remote was set up to control their satellite and TV.
36.4% of participants reported their remote was not set up to control satellite and TV.
18.2% of participants were not sure if their remote was set up to control satellite and TV.
Participants Liked:
Volume buttons
Recall button
Look and shape
Guide button
Main pain points:
Frustration and confusion with some buttons.
Personas
We translated our research into 3 user personas representing Dish remote users. Personas like “Arthur” anchored our design decisions around actual user needs at each step.
Heuristic Evaluation
Leveraging Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics, we systematically assessed where the remote violated established UX principles. This evaluation found issues like a lack of system feedback, unintuitive symbols, accidental button presses, and confusing labeling. Applying severity ratings highlighted the most critical problems.
Customer Journey Mapping
Journey mapping for the Arthur persona uncovered pain points across the user’s interaction with the remote. The scenario was based on Arthur setting up the remote to have easy access to his favorite apps. The information for the time and pain points was extracted from our usability research. The journey map illuminated redesign priorities.
Interactions, Touchpoints, & Pain Points Analyses:
Pain Points & Unmet Expectations: The paint points Arthur feels with the remote are geared towards the lack of instructions on the remote. It was difficult for Arthur to know that he was supposed to hold the diamond button. He expected there to be an option or function that told him what holding the diamond button did. However, with instructions, Arthur did feel confident. The biggest pain point he had was having to go back and check that the Apps option was checked off. He expected to see a checkmark on the options screen after pressing the option.
Unnecessary Touchpoints or Interactions: An unnecessary interaction could be confirming the selection by looking for a checkmark next to it. Perhaps a more efficient and time-saving feature would be for a small pop-up confirming the selection to appear. This pop-up could confirm that the selection has been made, and users who struggle with their vision would not have to strain to see and recognize the checkmark.
Time Spent: The Verify stage of Arthur’s journey took 4 out of the 6.8 minutes to complete all the stages. Waiting for the checkmark to appear took a long time and created a frustrating experience for Arthur. After the first 30 seconds, Arthur verbally expressed his annoyance and proceeded to press the Select button three more times. This wait could have been caused by a delay in the system processing the command or a weak signal from the remote to the receiver.
Moments of Truth: Arthur prefers simple products with simple processes. His journey started off with low notes as he struggled to locate the Diamond buttons. The following two phases boosted his confidence since he was about to complete those tasks quickly and successfully. Arthur’s feelings of anxiety and frustration during the Verify phase negatively impacted the remainder of his journey and should be noted as a moment of truth.
High Points & Exceeded Expectations: There were a couple of points in the journey where Arthur felt confident in his ability to complete the tasks. Expectations were met in the steps during the user journey when Arthur was tasked with locating the arrow buttons and the select button on the remote. He was confident in his knowledge of the function of these buttons and knew what to expect when these buttons were pressed. Even though Arthur was frustrated from waiting, the Verify stage ended with feelings of reassurance when the checkmark appeared and confirmed his selection.
Redesign Vision & Features
Redesign Vision
The redesign was limited to the remote. While there were opportunities for redesigning the UI of Dish’s system, this was not within the project’s scope. Synthesizing the research findings directly informed our redesign vision centered on simplification, clarity and resolving key pain points like confusing controls. This vision guided the mapping of redesigned features and flows, addressing core issues through changes like adding a pairing button, adjusting symbols based on convention, introducing a battery indicator and streamlining navigation.
Improvements Based on Findings
Finding 1: The absence of a battery life indicator leaves it up to the user to discover dead batteries.
Improvement: Add a battery indicator to enhance system feedback.Finding 2: Diamond buttons do not match standard conventions for a “favorites” button.
Improvement: Change the diamonds to a heart symbol (♥), as this is more intuitive.Finding 3: The recall button’s use of the word “recall” can be confusing to users.
Improvement: Rename the Recall button to “Last.”Finding 4: Buttons on the side of the remote can be unintentionally pressed.
Improvement: Relocate buttons to the front of the remote.Finding 5: Pairing the remote to other devices is complicated and difficult.
Improvement: Add a Pairing button to simplify this task.
Sketches
Our team used the information learned in the user interviews and the heuristic evaluations to redesign the remote. Our redesign creates a better user experience by:
Enhancing the visibility of system feedback.
Reducing end-user guesswork.
Offering more intuitive symbols and buttons.
Enhancing task efficiency.
Low-Fidelity Prototype
Figma was utilized to create a low-fidelity wireframe of how the remote could look with our redesign choices. This was useful to visualize how the end product would look.
Final Prototype
Once we tested out all the usability mistakes, we started designing the final look of the remote in Photoshop. The scope of our redesign focused on solving major user pain points. The redesign has the following changes:
Relocation and consolidation of Source buttons: Relocating the buttons improved user error prevention as users were unintentionally pressing them due to their location.
Improvement of the Favorite buttons: For the Favorites feature, the heart icon is more intuitive than the original diamond icon.
Addition of low battery indicator: The indicator improves the remote’s system feedback by informing the user (visual cue) when the batteries need to be changed.
Rename “Recall” button to “Last”: For the button’s function, Last is more aligned with the industry’s consistency and standards.
Addition of Pairing button: The pairing button simplifies the pairing process by reducing the number of steps/clicks users need to take to pair another device.
Lessons Learned & Next Steps
This project provided invaluable lessons on the importance of in-depth UX research and evaluation when redesigning products. While the Dish 54.0 remote is feature-packed, its design and UX failings became evident through the assessment process we followed. Research uncovered issues and user struggles while heuristic principles, persona alignment, and journey mapping illuminated the root causes and path to improvement in areas from mental models to specific pain points.
Applying this user-centered, methodical approach ensures the redesigned remote can provide good usability and user experience. Beyond resolving pressing remote control issues, additional improvements on the broader Dish TV user experience remain. As our research included Dish device interaction pain points like confusing menus and flows, exploring how the UI design of core screens, like the programming guide, could evolve merits consideration.
The next steps beyond this academic project would involve validating redesign choices through iterative prototyping and user testing. This validation would feed refinement before a finalized remote suitable for Dish quality and usability standards. More broadly, the techniques applied set a template for further elevating the customer experience across other Dish hardware and software touchpoints.