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http://www.spinellis.gr/pubs/conf/2003-HCI-HMS/html/CS03.htm This is an HTML rendering of a working paper draft that led to a publication. The publication should always be cited in preference to this draft using the following reference:
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Usability Design for the Home Media Station
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Konstantinos Chorianopoulos |
Diomidis Spinellis |
ELTRUN, Athens University of Economics & Business
http://itv.eltrun.aueb.gr
chk@aueb.gr, dds@aueb.gr
Abstract
A different usability design approach is needed for the emerging class of home infotainment appliances, collectively referred to as the home media station (HMS). Mass-media theory, consumer electronics engineering, content creation and content distribution play a major role towards the human-centered design of home media appliances. Different audience behavior factors, such as the attention span, and group watching, affect the design of the HMS. We have employed our approach in the design of a system offering dynamic synthesis of the advertising-break at each television set-top box.
There is growing evidence
from the marketplace that information technology is migrating from the PC in
the office to the set-top box in the living room. The HMS category encompasses
stand-alone or networked devices that range from video game consoles (Sony PS2,
Microsoft XBox), MP3 juke boxes (HP dec100), digital tuners (Nokia
Mediamaster), digital video recorders (TiVo, ReplayTV), as far as combinations
of the above (Digeo Moxi Media Center). User access to the HMS is currently
done according to the manufacturer’s idiosyncrasy or by applying rules from the
desktop and Internet experience (Carey 1997; Wallich 2002).
Most notable among the
recent findings regarding the HMS class of devices is the realization that
users’ subjective satisfaction is at odds with performance metrics. In a
usability test of three video skipping interfaces, users preferred the
interface that required more time, more clicks and had the highest error rate (Drucker, Glatzer, Mar, and Wong 2002). Users reasoned their choice on the basis of how fun and relaxing
an interface was.
It has also been widely
evident, in our literature review, that the approach followed by the majority
of scientific publications, regarding entertainment computing in the home, is
mainly PC-centric. Since traditional HCI principles assume a task-oriented
approach, where the human interacts with an application to accomplish a
particular goal, computer-mediated leisure applications require a fresh view of
the current paradigms.
The field of HCI has been
benefited by a multidisciplinary approach to design problems (Marcus 2002).
Successful user interfaces, apart from proven methodologies and multiple design
iterations, draw from a diverse array of design disciplines. For the case of
the HMS we have identified: 1) Mass-media theory, 2) content creation and
content distribution, and 3) broadcasting and consumer electronics engineering.
The role of each discipline to the design of HMS applications is summarized in
a table and each one of the factors is described with a reference to original
source.
Useful insights can be
gained from studying previous research, regarding the use of traditional
television, published in advertising, psychology and sociology journals. Lee
and Lee (1995) have identified a variety of fundamental uses and gratifications
that people seek from television watching. For example, there are four levels
of attention to the television set —from background noise to full
concentration— which contrasts ‘to the image of the highly interactive viewer
intently engaged with the television set that is often summoned up in talking
about new possibilities.’
Studies of media use in the
home indicate that there is an important technology-driven shift in the
household’s media consumption patterns every decade or so. In the 80’s there
was the PC (Vitalari, Venkatesh and Gronhaug 1985), in the 90’s there was the
Internet (Kraut, Mukhopadhyay, Szczypula, Kiesler and Scherlis 1998). The current
trend towards digital television transmission, local storage and manipulation
of media content through home media networks (Bell and Gemmell 2002) is already
apparent and has been studied by ethnographers for the case of the digital
set-top box (O'Brien, Rodden, Rouncefield and
J. Hughes 1999). Table 1 summarizes the most important and relevant to the case of the HMS
design factors that regard the user from a media consumption point of view.
Table 1 Audience behavior factors that affect the design of the HMS
|
Design Factor |
Description |
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Attention to the TV set |
There are multiple levels of attention to television. One can watch television or leave it open as an electric light (Lee and Lee 1995) |
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Group Watching |
There is either group or solitary use of television centric appliances (O'Brien et al. 1999) |
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Impulse Program Selection |
Viewers are loyal to a small number of programs, but now they are faced with an increased number of channels and ways of viewing their favorite programs (Lee and Lee 1995) |
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Distribution of Functionality |
Concentration of functionality on a single device (server) is incompatible with the distributed nature of home life (O'Brien et al. 1999) |
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Automation of Tasks |
Automation is usually synonymous with relaxed use, but sometimes users prefer the hassle of control, in cases such as their privacy (O'Brien et al. 1999) |
The introduction and wide
adoption of the Web has been promoted and attributed to the interactive content
of the new medium. It often goes without much thought, that if something is
interactive then it is also better and it will be preferable. However, the
passive uses of the broadcasted media are either desirable, or have an implicit
interactive dimension that takes place outside the medium itself (Lee and Lee
1995). An example of the latter is the social interaction that takes place in
groups of TV viewers, or the virtual-competition with the televised players of
quiz programs.
Computer-like menus, pages
and navigation look irrelevant on a TV screen, even when used by experienced
computer users (Lekakos, Chorianopoulos and Spinellis
2001). Therefore, there is a need
for television-values information design and story driven content (Jaaskelainen 2001).
Furthermore, interactivity and informational elements should be used to augment
entertainment content (Livaditi, Vassilopoulou, Lougos
and Chorianopoulos 2003). Table 2 summarizes the factors that affect the design of the
HMS from the perspective of media content creation.
Table 2 Content production
and distribution factors that affect the design of the HMS
|
Design Factor |
Description |
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Infotainment |
Both information and entertainment should be offered in a relaxed way (Livaditi et al. 2003) |
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Interactivity |
Current television patterns of use are passive, but interactivity can improve certain television experiences (Lee and Lee 1995) |
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Content Patterns |
Television viewers are accustomed to stories and characters in contrast to computer users who prefer objects and actions (Lekakos et al. 2001) |
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Personalization |
Television provides shared experiences that people can talk about, which contrasts with the effort for personalization (Lee and Lee 1995) |
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User control |
Television experience has been linear and story driven so far, but the video-games industry has invented ways of adding user control within a story (Jaaskelainen 2001) |
The broadcasting model of
computing encompasses a radical shift in the mentality of application
development process and tools. Milenkovic (1998) highlights the differences
with the client-server mentality, describes the concept of the carousel and
explains why the characteristics of the networking infrastructure are an
important factor in the type of feasibly deployed applications. Digital local
storage technology (Whittingham 2001) takes viewer control from simple channel
selection with the remote to non-linear local programming (Chorianopoulos and
Spinellis 2002). However, storing copyrighted content locally is against the
interests of media owners (Bell and Gemmell 2002). Apart from the rise of digital rights
management issues networking and transferring content between devices in the
home poses a number of significant maintainability issues (Spinellis 2002). Table 3 summarizes the design factors that affect HMS use
from the perspective of technology.
Table 3 Technological
factors that affect the design of the HMS
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Design Factor |
Description |
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TiVo content |
Both stored and broadcasted programming should be available and complementary to each other (Whittingham 2001; Milenkovic 1998) |
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Networked Storage |
Local storage and networking at the home is a favorite, but copyright holders are concerned (Bell and Gemmell 2002) |
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Maintainability |
There are numerous opportunities for networking between diverse home appliances, which come at the cost of maintainability (Spinellis 2002) |
The dynamic insertion of
advertising, during the play-out of copyrighted media content in the home, is a
form of substitution for the royalty rights that have to been paid to media
owners (Bell and Gemmel 2002). Moreover, the television advertising-break has a
fixed duration, small hard-disk storage requirements and is relatively simple
to integrate with real-time broadcasts. Next, we describe the iMEDIA system
that offers dynamic construction of the advertising-break at the television
set-top box for each home. The iMEDIA system has been designed and tested with
the purpose of replacing the broadcast television’s advertising-break, but can
be extended to handle similar cases of dynamic advertising insertion, such as
television programming stored on a hard-disk or MP3 music. The design of the iMEDIA system is described in Table 4 on the basis of the factors that affect user
interface design for home media applications and the respective resolution
strategy that was followed.
Table 4 The resolution
strategy for each design factor for the case of the iMEDIA system
|
Design Factor |
Resolution Strategy |
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TiVo content |
The advertising-break is dynamically created for each set-top box. The overall experience is seamless for the viewer |
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Group Watching |
The break may be personalized on the group or the individual level |
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Interactivity |
Some advertisement spots may have additional interactive content available for later browsing |
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Infotainment |
Interactive content of a commercial offers opportunities for informative material in the form of a micro-web-site |
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User Control |
The users may choose to opt-out from receiving personalized advertising-breaks |
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Personalization |
The advertising-break is targeted to household viewers, while some of the spots within it may be the same across different households |
Additional case studies of
important television programming include news and music video-clips. Music
video-clip programming from channels such as MTV may offer a personalized ‘top
20’ for each week. Moreover, receiving trivial and lyrics —through Internet
resources— offers personalization of the overlaid information. While there have
been various treatments to adapt multimedia content to the user (e.g. content
and collaborative filtering), the results of further research should address
prominent HCI questions such as the feasibility of an agent-mediated (using MS
Agent) dialog interface for leisure applications and how to evaluate a user
interface when the goal is to be relaxing and fun to use.
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