How to analyse if your UX upgrade is worth your money?

Recently I went to a big electronic store looking to upgrade my TV. Though I am not much into electronic gadgets especially Television but thought it’s a high time to look for an upgrade from a decade-old outdated TV to a hi-tech smart TV. I tried to enter into the store by pulling the door handle towards me but the door was only meant to be pushed not pull. I can say this is the common challenge we all face every day, isn’t it?

So, what I have observed and how with a simple tweak we can solve this issue? Keep reading we will discuss later in the article. But first, let’s talk about other experience issues I faced during my visit. Then I went to the Television section where all the brands of Televisions were showcased. The salesman came over to me and asked what size you are looking at and in which brand. Which made me a bit confused as I haven’t zeroed on any specific model and that too obvious as well. Many consumers like me don’t do thorough research and go directly to the showroom to align their requirement with respect to the available models. Ideally, anyone would appreciate if they are asked the right questions by the salesman for narrowing down the selection.

I told him that I need something for the room size of 13*15, with better image clarity and sound and want it to get connected with the internet for seamless entertainment. Assuming he wasn’t ready for this question, he started showing something irrelevant and expensive. I thought of giving it a try and followed him silently to the place where the most expensive of all is being hanged with the required elegance 😉

With the utmost excitement on his face, he started showing the remote of the television which is touchscreen-based remote. At the first glance itself, I kind of amused by the looks of remote and then I took it in my hand and started to explore and this is the point when my excitement and the feeling of appreciation towards the technology masterpiece went into the vein but why?

Now I will answer two of my questions which I left to discuss later.

Let’s start with the first, what was the way out of the common issue which we all face every day deciding if we need to push or pull the door?

Let’s assume if we have a flat plate/Sticker pasted to one side of the door where it needs to be pushed, there is no chance people will be confused if they need to pull or push the door but how? Because there is no door handle to pull, you are bounded to only push. We can obviously save a few bucks in order to implement it while giving a better experience to the people.

Now let’s move on to the 2nd question. Why I have rejected to buy myself that TV just by using it’s remote?

When I first took the remote in my hand it felt a bit fragile and being an Indian where your family fights to change the channel every 30 minutes, I thought it will be injustice with that great looking remote and that couldn’t survive more than a couple of weeks in the majority of Indian families like mine. Still, I thought as an average Indian guy, we can use the cover to secure it from the hustle and bustle but when I tried to operate the remote for every single thing it was taking triple my time than the normal remote. How? Because every time you need to do something you need to look at the remote as there is not enough user feedback on touching it as there is no physical button on it. Secondly, I thought if it is being operated by an old member of the family or differently able people it’s hard to do so as there is no imprinted Brail (Dots) on it.

I am still to understand why we need to spend that much time, money just to make things looks great? Instead, we should focus more on improving the usability of the product aligned with the best user experience. Maybe this remote works well in any other case where the visual feedback is not the primary concern but in the case of Television, it fails as a technology.

This is just a simple observation which I had. You may also have come across multiple use cases where there is a lot has been spent just to make things beautiful but there is user experience flaw. Do let me know in the comment.