Perceived usefulness and performance of human-to-human communications on television

Abstract

A key assumption of future television (TV) environments is that the future TV viewing experiences will be more active and interactive. Currently several TV technologies based on networked computing, e.g., IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) or Mobile TV, have made it possible for people to interact with their TVs, or even with other viewers through their TVs, by allowing them to access additional functions, for example actively participating in a quiz show, instantly sharing other viewers’ opinions and sending or receiving emails while they are watching a TV programme. To ensure uptake of these new TV technologies, it is essential to match the performance of the novel systems to both current TV viewing experiences and future user needs, since the characteristics of the additional tasks that TV viewers will perform will lead to other substantially different TV viewing experiences. This paper reports on the usefulness and performance evaluation of a novel TV-based human-to-human interaction environment, where audiences of a specific TV channel can exchange public and private text messages. It combines the two popular analogies (Internet chat and SMS) and embeds them into the viewers’ TV experience. Our results showed that this TV hosted human-to-human communication environment could integrate well with the current TV viewing experience. This might lead to applications such as TV-based personal messengers and/or live bulletin board community for fans of a specific TV show. They also revealed several issues that need to be addressed in the development of new TV technologies.