The interactive television user experience so far

Abstract

After a decade of digital broadcasting, there is still much that may be done to improve the interactive television user experience. The United Kingdom has pioneered many developments in interactive television and so-called 'red button' services are regularly used by millions of viewers. This paper presents some of the key user experience lessons that may be learnt with respect to navigation design.The ability to provide successful user experiences has been restricted for a number of reasons. It is inherently problematic to apply interactivity to a predominantly broadcast medium. The relatively constrained hardware and primitive middleware of many set-top boxes tends to limit performance, while restricted bandwidth and limited graphics capabilities have inhibited the sophistication of presentation. As a result, the user experience has often fallen far short of user expectations.Interactive television has evolved distinct navigational principles, generally based on hierarchical menus. These rely on up, down, left and right buttons and some form of selection. This is effective within the limitations of most remote controls but it remains unclear how far it represents an optimal paradigm. There is still debate about whether to use numbers, colour-coded shortcuts or dedicated buttons. Consistent conventions have yet to emerge even at this basic level.More powerful hardware and improved graphics, connected to high-definition displays, are now raising the bar for designers, enabling new forms of user interface and interaction. Broadband network connections will allow genuinely interactive propositions and convergent communications services. The risk is that this will further fragment and complicate the overall user experience unless best practice design patterns can be consistently applied.