ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET INSTITUTE FOR INTERACTIVE MEDIA & LEARNING SUBJECT NUMBER & NAME 95566 Digital Information and Interaction Design NAME OF STUDENT Juanita (Wanida) Sammanee STUDENT ID NUMBER 11171081 STUDENT EMAIL Wanida.Sammanee@student.uts.edu.au STUDENT CONTACT NUMBER 0479096806 NAME OF LECTURER / TUTOR Linda Leung and Michael Connerty DUE DATE 23 September 2011 ASSESSMENT ITEM NUMBER/TITLE Assignment 1: Design Approach WORD COUNT 3506 Academic staff may use plagiarism detection software (such as Turnitin) for checking student work or when plagiarism is suspected. The Turnitin system verifies the originality of your work, checking for matching text on the web, through electronic journals and books, and in a large database of student assignments from around the world. For further information see the FASS Study Guide at http://www.fass.uts.edu.au/students/assessment/preparing/study‐guide.pdf or the Turnitin website at http://www.turnitin.com/static/turnitin_splash.html . 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Please provide details of extensions granted here if applicable ___________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Signature of Student: If submitted electronically tick here to indicate you agree with the above Date: 22/09/2011 How can the negative experience issues in interactive TV be improved? Juanita Sammanee Digital Information & Interaction Design University of Technology, Sydney Wanida.Sammanee@student.uts.edu.au (61) 0479 096 806 ABSTRACT This paper is explores negative user experience with iTV in an attempt to understand what causes them and how they might be improved. TV audiences are primarily interested in being entertained while relaxed and react negatively to complexity and interruptions. Simple controls and simple navigation systems are likely to have more acceptance. Reducing interruptions to programs, especially from advertising, is also likely to reduce negative user experience. This may be achieved by giving users simple controls to extend or terminate advertising More social interaction about programs is likely to improve user engagement in iTV. A second screen may be a good way to achieve all of these improvements more easily. Keywords Negative Interface Reaction, User Experiences, Emotional Reaction, Experience Design INTRODUCTION Interactive TV is a term covering a range of technologies which are changing all the time. It is difficult to “pin down” or define. With increasing broadband speeds a lot of video material is available over the internet on demand and this is also a kind of interactive TV viewed on different devices. “Although various experiments took place in the 1980s, interactive TV never took off as expected. The closest thing to it is the ability to play, stop and rewind movies from the video-on-demand (VOD) offerings on cable TV” (Ziff Davis, Inc. 1996). Digital TV (dTV) and Cable TV are all interactive to some degree if only via the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) and this essay will treat them as similar enough for our purposes. They are all primarily designed for entertainment and delivery to homes rather than offices. They have been replacing traditional passive analogue TV for several decades. So it seems to me that watching TV is a group leisure activity generally taking place in a shared or living room in the house while internet browsing is generally a personal or a job related activity undertaken at a desk. The importance of this understanding might become clearer as we review the evidence. It is clear that iTV has been slow to attract users compared with the internet and this is often attributed to usability issues. “Digital and separately, interactive TV fell among the top third most difficult to use products, while analogue TV fell among the top third most easy to use products” (Freeman & Lessiter 2001 cited in ibid. 2003). iTV is perceived as being as difficult to use as a computer. However, another study (in a different country and 7 years later) indicated older people find the internet easier to access via iTV than using a computer (Obrist, Bernhaupt and Tscheligi 2008). The evidence can be contradictory and confusing. There is a popular acceptance of the idea that advertising is annoying and that TV advertising is more annoying than other kinds. The author has heard many criticisms along these lines from relatives and friends and there is ample evidence in “gripe” sites e.g. “it really annoys me when during the program they flash up on the bottom of the screen what's coming on next! It is very irritating and in my opinion fairly pointless” (Mr Angry, 2009). Other trials and surveys however report generally positive responses to advertising in iTV (Bellman, Schweda and Varan 2009). In my experience most thinking people accept that advertising, if not exactly necessary, is an established part of our culture and lifestyles and we generally accept it while occasionally “letting of steam” by criticising the most annoying Ads. If it were not there we would need to pay for the services that we like in other ways. So, the question for a designer is can we reduce the annoyances while keeping the benefits? Does iTV in particular offer ways to make Ads more acceptable? This contrast across cultures in an environment of rapidly changing technologies and evolving social and technical awareness presents a complex challenge to the designer of the user interface. One approach to user experience design is to look at what is causing negative emotions and reactions to iTV and how they might be improved by better designs. EXISTING EVIDENCE What reduces users’ enjoyment of iTV? A review of the literature has produced a number of studies dealing with emotional reactions to iTV, both positive and negative. A very formal and comprehensive study with 1333 participants conducted by the Department of Psychology, University of London provides strong evidence on the causes of negative emotional reactions to iTV (Freeman & Lessiter 2003). This is the largest number of participants found in published surveys on iTV reactions. Although the main aim of this survey was to analyse usability and see how users’ prior existing attitudes were related to usability problems with digital and interactive TV, this is clearly related to the users’ experience with iTV. This was part of a wider research effort in the UK exploring consumers’ motivations and barriers to use of dTV. An earlier survey by the same authors found that users rated digital and iTV as much more difficult to use than analogue TV (ITC-USE 2001, cited in Freeman & Lessiter 2003). Although they mix dTV and iTV issues, the results are quite general and apply to the user experience with iTV. The 2003 survey consisted of 118 questions in four sections addressing: • attitudes to technology generally • attitudes to media usage • attitudes to iTV and dTV • demographic background (gender, age, family employment etc) They achieved a 27.4% response rate from 4870 questionnaires which is remarkable considering the number of questions. They used a mathematical technique called Principal Axis Factoring to analyse these results and classify the respondents into seven groups. These seven groups were then clustered into higher order groups according to their attitudes to using the technology. The results in Figure 1. tell us that over half of the respondents feel that they do not like the interface in iTV. Clearly designers need to simplify the interface further to make it attractive to most of the UK consumers. Freeman & Lessiter (2003) point out that there are three groups evaluating in terms of ease of use (Figure 1.). In the first group, the technology of iTV is quite complex for them. Those people probably have conservative attitudes and little affinity for technology. The second group contains people who think they can deal with it if they want to. This group potentially do not mind to use technology if it can satisfy them. Thirdly there are people who believe the functions on PCs are better than on iTV. Figure 1. Proportion of UK population in each group (Freeman & Lessiter 2003) A difficulty in using iTV is one of the significant issues that can lead to a negative experience for the users. Users who are familiar with technology do not have a problem using iTV. However it is the kind of technology which needs an understanding of its usage. If the interface and the tools are too complicated, people tend to keep using it like analogue TV and do not engage in interaction. One issue which needs further investigation here is the remote control. It may be that the remote control causes some of the difficulty with the interaction in addition to the design of the screen interface. Bellman, Schweda and Varan (2009) reported that a comprehensive test of 3 Ad formats revealed generally positive reactions after Ad interaction; however one specific negative comment was that ‘Pressing Navigation buttons on the remote was “too much work"’. This is probably related to navigation using the remote control. The author’s personal experience is that remote controls are neither familiar nor easy to use when navigating a page with hyperlinks and this may be behind some of the difficulty experienced by iTV users. Moreover, low cognitive ability also can reduce users’ enjoyment of iTV. Viewers who are not familiar with technology and have little experience with it do not like to learn new skills. According to the results of an experiment with 427 participants aged 14 to 45, measuring various emotions, indicate that those with less cognitive ability do not enjoy movies as much with interactivity (Vorderer, Knobloch & Schramm 2001). This suggests that interruption of the flow of the show creates negative reactions in that group. However, the graduate group in the study enjoyed movies more with interaction which could control the outcome, like a game. The graduates did not feel distracted which may have reduced the engagement of the other group. What activities are most enjoyable in interactive TV? There is evidence that the most enjoyable activities in interactive TV are social interactions using some communication service. Humans like to talk, discuss and share interests. People spend a lot of time chatting and communicating with each other during a day, especially women and girls. A survey of interaction usage by The iTV Cabo service using telephone polling (nearly 1000 questionnaires across 8 types of interaction), showed that social interaction is the main driver of iTV interaction in Portugal (Quico 2003). Their results indicate that the most popular programs which the users like to interact with are games, football matches and talkshows. For example, two main areas of digital interactive TV services from TV Cabo’ interactive services are the Walled Garden and the Channel’s interactive TV programs (Quico 2003). First of all, the interactive Walled Garden primarily provides internet access and the most used/services were Internet with electronic mail and other communication services, Electronic Programming Guide (EPG), and Club games. However, online banking was the least used service. Cabo also provided interactive TV programs, Moreover, the channels that users interacted with most are sport, especially interactive football matches. There are three favourite aspects of interaction that are in common use: changing camera angle, using the video-ondemand and taking part in the forum. People like to post messages to a discussion on a forum frequently during the football match. The screen illustrated in Figure 2. shows that they use over half of the interactive screen for messages in that sports program. Users can change back to nearly full screen with a toolbar down the right hand side for watching most of the game. Figure 2. Interactive Football Match from Sport TV: Version Available from June 2001 until October 2002 (Quico 2003) The talk shows that were successful show viewer’s comments in a similar layout and some of the messages are questions which may be asked of the guest in the show. In this way they engage the community in social activity in a similar way to highly successful social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Directing the communication to the content of the show provides a focus and stimulus which seems to generate a lot of interaction activity. Quico (2003) points out that some of the interaction over the sport is expressing negative emotions about the referee, but the overall effect is more engagement with the event, the medium and the community which must be enjoyable because it is popular. In addition, Quico (2003) also noted that virtual communities builders applications have the potential of becoming true killer applications for interactive television. What annoys users of ITV? Advertisements are a common source of irritation while viewers are watching TV/iTV. TV advertisements often interrupt programs to keep the attention of the audience waiting for the next section of the show (Wikipedia 2011). Although the viewers often use the remote control to avoid advertising, during the ads in any TV broadcast, some people mute the sound, leave the room, call friends, change the channels and may even turn off the TV (Wikipedia 2011). Informal evidence from the internet suggests that many viewers are still unhappy with the advertisements on TV/iTV. For instance, a person from a “gripe” site at said “I find all commercials particularly distasteful and annoying”. Another post (The Weekly Gripe 2006) commented that “it is really annoying when there are too many adverts on TV and radio”. Advertising can influence the viewers in many negative ways. A further example from the website of an iTV “hate” forum, there are 3,793 out of 5,089 people (75%) have negative opinion about iTV (Amplicate BETA2011). The relative amount of advertising and its frequency also affect how much it annoys viewers. “Viewers are also often annoyed when commercial breaks occur too frequently” (Zhou 2004). There is much evidence from TV studies that longer commercials drive more viewers away from their programs (Siddarth and Chattopadhyay, 1998) and Danaher, 1995 cited in Zhou 2005) However, commercial ads are an important source of income for TV. Interactive advertising means the communication of marketing and branding messages using the expanded functionality supported by interactive television (Jensen 2005). Without advertising there would be a lot less free TV and cable TV would be more expensive. Can Ads be made less Annoying? One published study of interactive Advertising, compared to advertising on conventional analogue TV as a control, shows generally positive reactions (Bellman, Schweda and Varan 2009). However, the participants received a small reward for participation which may have influenced their feelings towards these advertisements compared with the “average” viewer at home. In this study the 559 participants had some control over how long they watched the Ads and whether or not they missed any of the entertainment and these are probably features which reduce annoyance. The study analysed interaction with three iTV Ad formats. In part of the process they asked participants to list their thoughts after each interaction and classify them as positive, neutral or negative. The three major categories of iTV advertising used were firstly Impulse Response (Buy Now!), secondly Dedicated Advertiser Location (DAL) which is a separate channel, like moving to another website on the internet, and thirdly Telescopic Advertising. The latter format allows viewers to choose to see more information about the advertised product in the one channel while the show is paused (or at least its display on their computer is paused). The results showed clearly that viewers liked Dedicated Advertiser Location (DAL) Ads less than Telescopic Ads (interactive options to see more product information while the show is delayed). The DAL format is most like an internet site to which viewers can choose to go while the show they were watching goes on. The Telescopic format however This result is compatible with the other evidence that users do not like their viewing interrupted (DAL Ads) , but suggests they are more accepting of it if they don’t miss anything and they are in control of how much of the Ad they view and have a very easy method of terminating the diversion. What improves users’ enjoyment of iTV? A study of user needs and experiences with iTV in Salzburg using 31 subjects found that most users require high quality and fast response while older people find it simpler to access the internet via iTV than via Computer (Obrist, Bernhaupt and Tscheligi 2008). An experiment with a very small group of users of ITV users in 2000 concluded that users preferred very simple navigation interfaces, they liked to browse not search for content but they did not like to lose what they had found while they browsed for other choices (Eronen & Vuorimaa 2000). These conclusions are interesting and the first two are supported by other studies with much larger groups. The third observation has not been found elsewhere but it seems correct. I would like to be able to save a shortlist while looking through an EPG and then return to it to make choices. This idea was included in a small survey discussed below. Survey Results A small internet survey was designed and sent to contacts in Australia and Thailand in order to get some up to date information and check on some of the conclusions from the available empirical evidence. Ten people responded and the questions and detailed results are included in Appendix A. The ten respondents all used the internet but only 50% used dTV and 20% cable TV. The most popular technology in general was Cable TV with digital TV second. 50% liked iTV and the rest recorded “Don’t know” because there is very little available in either country. The majority feeling about advertising was marginally positive. Nobody liked it and nobody was neutral. 70% felt it was “Not too bad” and the rest were annoyed by it. Dislikes were listed with “bad signal” and “remote not working” as controls to understand how much people disliked the other issues. The dislikes were ranked by giving each choice a weight (6 for dislike most and 1 for dislike least) so the highest weighted score was disliked most in the combined responses. The weighted scores were as follows: Table 1. Weighted dislike ranking of TV/iTV issues Bad signal/picture freezing 47 Advertising interrupting a movie 40 Advertising between programs 36 Remote not working 35 Advertising interrupting a sports game 29 Advertising interrupting News 28 It is interesting that this small group was more annoyed by advertising than their remote controls not working. Respondents were mainly annoyed (60%) or bored (20%) by advertising interrupting other programs but only one was “interested”. Nothing really useful was gathered from the free text fields inviting people to specify the things they most like and disliked about iTV. EPG was used by only 4 people and of those 3 used the DTV guide. Finally in ranking the “wish list” of features they would like was done with a weighted score using the same technique as above. Table 1. Weighted like ranking of TV/iTV features Save a Favourites List 32 see EPG without interrupting Programs 27 Search using Text 23 Making a shortlist for comparison 22 See all channels together 20 This indicates that favourites list is clearly more popular and that feature which do not interrupt the programme are attractive. How can we address the issues? The Cabo TV screens (Quico 2003) suggest that partitioning the available screen space in interaction mode is an acceptable compromise for many users. If this were done, then part of the interactive area could be assigned to advertising (logos, banner text and links to DAL’s). If advertisers had their ads in front of the viewers in the interaction screen they would have less need to interrupt the flow of the program for advertising videos. They could be shorter and less frequent. Of course a second screen to hold the interaction page would remove any needs to partition the main screen and compromise the main entertainment. In a field trial of iTV on a second screen recorded some very strong positive reactions by the users “I didn’t just like it, I loved it” (Basapur, Harboe, Mandalia, Novak, Vuong and Metcalf 2011). The second screen in this trial was a small computer near the user. This means they have easier access than using a remote control. One major advantage was forum post and information related to the program remains visible to the users when they chose to read it. This screen could also provide space for advertisers and links to their DAL sites for interested users. Perhaps these advertisers would also want to interrupt the program on the main screen for short periods, but the interruptions should be fewer and shorter in time. Another way to reduce negative experience may be to give people time to become familiar with the new features and to avoid interrupting their programme. One way this could be achieved is also with a second screen on which the interaction screen is kept visible, leaving the main screen for the programme (and very short ads). Having the interaction screen present all the time should reduce the feeling of confusion when an unfamiliar screen suddenly appears. Having advertising on it would be less annoying because it does not interrupt the main flow. Users could interact with viewer forums when the main content was displaying an ad or something less interesting. Our survey indicates that there are several features users would like with would be easier to implement on a second screen and a favourites list is a favourite! We know that technology does have more acceptance over time (Figure 3.). So, we should consider that results from 10 years ago are not necessarily exactly right today. Figure 3. Acceptance of technologies during the 20th Century (from http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/02/10/opinion/10op.graphic.ready.html) Nevertheless, there is recent evidence that many TV viewers have a negative reaction to complexity and are very sensitive to information overload (Freeman & Lessiter 2003). Making interfaces very simple and easy to use is probably the way to get the largest reduction in negative reactions. This applies to remote control as much as to screen design. The design of the screen and the remote need to be considered together. The number of buttons is very high on modern remotes, it may be better with a track ball for moving a cursor and fewer buttons. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS To sum up, iTV has a strong competitor in the internet, so its designers need to address the user experience issues. There are two main issues that cause negative experience for the viewers, difficulty of usage and advertising interruptions. There is clear evidence that users of TV want to be relaxed and be entertained. It is not the internet although it uses similar technology and can learn from it and utilise some of the same infrastructure for communication with the users. The viewers will interact if it is easy and entertaining, but most are not interested in learning or thinking too much. However, better design of remote controls and interfaces could improve usage and a second screen can be used to help reduce negative experience. It will also help to allow more social interaction while the program is playing. Moreover, iTV should be concerned much more about what the users dislike and like in order to improve the acceptance and usage of its services. A good reminder from Edward Tufte: “There is no such thing as information overload, just bad design. If something is cluttered and/or confusing, fix your design.” (cited in Porter 2010). REFERENCES Amplicate BETA. 2011, iTV Hate; TV Channels in UK; Counting Your Opinion, viewed 21 September 2011, < http://amplicate.com/hate/itv?sort=featured> Basapur S., Harboe G., Mandalia H. Novak A, Vuong Vand Metcalf C. 2011, Field trial of a dual device user experience for iTV in EuroITV '11, Proceddings of the 9th international interactive conference on Interactive television, Lisbon, Portugal. Bellman, S., Schweda, A. and Varan, D. 2009, A Comparison of Three Interactive Television AD Formats, Journal of Interactive Advertising, Vol 10 No 1, pp.14-34, American Academy of Advertising, USA. Eronen, L. & Vuorimaa, P. 2000, User Interface for Digital Television: a Navigator Case Study; In Proceedings of Advanced Visual Interfaces 2000. pp. 276~279, Palermo, Italy. Freeman, J. & Lessiter, J. 2003, Using Attitude Based Segmentation to Better Understand viewers’ Usability Issues with Digital and Interactive TV, Department of Psychology, University of London, UK. Jensen J. 2005, Interactive Television: new Genres, New Format, New Content; Proceeding IE 2005, Proceedings of the second Australasian conference on Interactive entertainment; Creativity & Cognition Studios Press Sydney, Australia Livaditi J., Vassilopoulou, K., Lougos C. and Chorianopoulos K. 2003, Needs and Gratifications for Interactive TV Applications: Implications for Designers, Proceedings of the 36th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’03) Hawaii, USA. Lu, K. (May 2005 accessed 21 July 2005) 'Chapter 5: Principles of interaction design for iTV: synthesizing the investigation' in Interaction design principles for interactive television, A thesis presented to the academic faculty, Master of Science in Information Design and Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, viewed 9 September 2011, <http://drr.lib.uts.edu.au/file/14937/95566_luprinciples.pdf > Mr Angry, The Weekly Gripe. 2009, What's Coming Up Next On TV?, viewed 21 September 2011, <http://www.weeklygripe.co.uk/a721.asp > Oliveira, E. 2011, Video Access and Interaction Based on Emotions, Lasige, University of Lisbon, Portugal. http://idtv.det.uvigo.es/~mlnores/personal/EuroITV_files/oliveira.pdf (Accessed Sep 2011). Obrist M, Bernhaupt R. and Tscheligi M. 2008, Interactive TV for the home: An Ethnographic Study on User's Requirements and Experiences; INTL. JOURNAL OF HUMANCOMPUTER INTERACTION 24(2) 174-196; Taylor & Francis Group LLC online http://www.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/. Porter, J. 2010, Information Overload Is Not a Problem: A Discourse On the Process of Designing for Real People, viewed 23 September 2011, <http://52weeksofux.com/post/963764429/information-overload-is-not-the-problem> Quico, C. 2003, Are Communication service the killer applications for Interactive TV? or “I left my wife because I am in love with TV set”, TV Cabo Portugal, Portugal <http://www.brighton.ac.uk/interactive/euroitv/euroitv03/Papers/Paper12.pdf > (Accessed Sep 2011). The Weekly Gripe. 2010 , Paying the Cable Company to Watch Commercials, viewed 21 September 2011, <http://www.weeklygripe.co.uk/a878.asp> The Weekly Gripe. 2006, Too Many Adverts on TV and Radio, viewed 21 September 2011, <http://www.weeklygripe.co.uk/a192.asp> Vorderer, P., Knobloch, S. & Schramm, H. 2001, Does Entertainment Suffer From Interactivity? The Impact of Watching an Interactive TV Movie on Viewers’ Experience of Entertainment, Media Psychology: University of Music and Drama, Hannover Germany. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 2011 Television Advertisement, viewed 21 September 2011, < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_advertisement> Zhou, W. 2004, The choice of Commercial Breaks in Television Programs: The Number, Length and Timing THE JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS No 3, part of a PhD at : Department of Economics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong <http://www2.fbe.hku.hk/~wzhou/papers/TV%20commercial%20breaks.pdf viewed 23 September 2011> Ziff Davis, Inc. 1996-2011, Definition of interactive TV, PC Magazine, PCMAG.COM, viewed 22 September 2011, <http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=interactive+TV&i=45125,00.asp> APPENDIX A Showing 3 text responses No responses selected Smart Mobile Phone 23/9/2011 8:49 AMView Responses Free tv 22/9/2011 8:40 PMView Responses Mobile phone service 22/9/2011 2:12 PMView Responses dTV's EPG to browse the programme 23/9/2011 8:49 AMView Responses Cable cause it is fit with my budget. 22/9/2011 8:40 PMView Responses Cable TV 22/9/2011 4:26 PMView Responses Variety Channel 22/9/2011 2:33 PMView Responses Update News , Documentary , Music Video and Movies 22/9/2011 2:12 PMView Responses it can be recorded and watched later more variety in the programs available. Cable television generally has less ads 22/9/2011 7:32 AMView Responses Free and have verity channels. 21/9/2011 1:21 PMView Responses many choices/many channels 21/9/2011 12:53 AMView Responses dTV 21/9/2011 12:30 AMView Responses navigating with remote control 23/9/2011 8:49 AMView Responses ITv 22/9/2011 8:40 PMView Responses DTV 22/9/2011 4:26 PMView Responses Poor Quality 22/9/2011 2:33 PMView Responses Nothing. I don't spend too much time for TV. 22/9/2011 2:12 PMView Responses although we moved to digital tv all the programs are from 20 years ago so are really old reruns of the same shows. 22/9/2011 7:32 AMView Responses Delay on Remote and rely on wifi capacity limited of screen size 21/9/2011 1:21 PMView Responses finding what I want to watch 21/9/2011 12:53 AMView Responses iTV 21/9/2011 12:30 AMView Responses
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