Since the turn of the century Interactive TV as taken off, with an estimation that in 2005 almost 60% of UK households had some kind of interactive tv box[1]. By 2010 we would have left analogue behind and be firmly in a fully digital world.
Considering that Interactive T.V. is becoming more important in life its quite concerning that there has been little done in improving the services and how the users can interact with them.
I personally have a Sky+ box at home, and there are times I feel like ripping it out and throwing it away. I have had it over 2 years, so one would think I would be comfortable with the way it works. However, I still always end up making the same mistake! You are probably wondering what this mistake is, so I am going to outline it in a scenario.
Scenario:You are currently watching BBC1 and feel the need to browse. So you use the controller - left and right arrow buttons - and move to channel five in the organizer mode (meaning channel information is visible at the bottom of the screen whilst still watching the channel currently viewing). When you come across channel five in the organizer, you use the up and down arrows keys to go through the organizer to see what is coming later on in the night. You come across an episode of CSI. You seem interested and you want to find out more information such as what season it is?, what episode it is ? etc. So you click on the i button = information. This button would normally display a screen with the program content of the program highlighted. However in this scenario it does not. Instead it shows the information of the program that was being shown on BBC1.
It is annoying feature that can lead to you giving up wanting to see this program because you cant be bothered to go into the menu(which takes you out of the channel mode - as in you cant see the program you are watching). Or you could wait for the program to start, thus disturbing you when you could have been watching something you wanted.
There are other ways to find the above information, for example, you could go to the menu where all the programs are listed and click for the information there or you record/set reminder and go to the planner. All viable solutions but they are long and time consuming. Call me lazy for not wanting to fiddle around with the controller for an extra few seconds but I believe this issue is not assisting users ability to browse channels effectively. Users should be given an opportunity to easily browse channels and make a choice on how they can do this. It is here why I believe restricting users ability to browse channels just hinders an other wise acceptable interactive T.V. box.
I know Sky+ have there HD boxes available, I just hope they have attempted to solve this irritating problem and make my channel browsing experience much easier. One question I would be intrigued to know is that, when Sky+ designers are designed the box, which type of process were they following? Was it goal-directed[2] or thoughtful-directed[2]?.
[1] First UK homes to go digital TV only http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4390579.stm
[2] Sharp et.al, 2007, Interaction Design beyond human computer interaction, Untied States: J.Wiley, 2nd Edition.
0 comments:
Post a Comment