Design of an App for Internet-Enabled TVs

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Designing applications for Internet-Enabled TVs is much different than designing for the desktop or mobile web. Here I explain the process we used at ConTV to design LIVO, a video on demand service.



What is LIVO?

LIVO is an application that runs -so far- on Samsung TVs. Users can install the application for free directly from their TV using the Samusng App store. LIVO provides an interface to browse and play video on demand from different partners offering different shows.




Problems

We wanted to design a great application, something easy and fun to use. On the way we found several problems:

  • Distance: you have to test your concepts and designs on a real TV and a few meters away from it.
  • The TV is mostly a passive medium, the app had to start playing video as soon as possible.
  • Usability: managing an app with a remote control is incredibly limiting.
  • Text must be big.
  • A very common problem in many TV apps: navigation. It’s difficult to highlight interface elements to tell users in which part of the app she is.
  • Important trade-offs: usability against beautiful interface.



    • Users

    We decided we had to know more about how people use TVs at home, so we organized interviews with target users. We talked to them and made a lot of questions in order to discover how they choose shows, how they share what they see, their motivations and general behavior around the TV. With all the information we created personas that proved to be extremely valuable during the first part of the design process.



    LIVO TV App Menus and Interface



    The design

    After a strategy session supported by the user research we decided which features this video on demand service should provide to satisfy the target users. These are the mean aspects from the LIVO app:

  • It provides fast access to videos.
  • Easy navigation.
  • Great content.
  • Easy to read text.
  • Simple but with a few additional features.
  • Recommendation engine is transparent to the user.



    • Links

    If you want additional information about LIVO, you can visit the Samsung Smart TV Contest website. Additionally you can find information about the Internet-Enabled TV business on the ConTV website.




    Improving the User Experience (and conversion rate) with Heat Maps

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    Heat maps can show in which part of a website visitors are clicking, they are a color representation of the amount of clicks. Heat maps could be of great help to improve the user experience of an already working website. To show you how, I would like to present an example.



    Understanding the business and users

    Guia Munich is a German website for Spanish speaking tourists visiting Munich, offering personalized guided tours. Although many young people visit the website, the real target are older visitors, people willing to pay an extra for a small and customized tour. These groups of users are apparently not that experienced with computers, websites and using the mouse to point. A heat map gave us some interesting insights to improve the website performance.



    Homepage Heat Map



    Changes on the website

    The colored boxes on the homepage show the tours available in Munich and Bavaria. Thanks to the heat map, we realized that many users were clicking on the images, hoping to get more information about a particular tour. Unfortunately, in the past these pictures were not clickable, only tour titles were (e.g. “Sur de Baviera”.)



    Picture Heat Map



    I believe some users were clicking on images and as nothing was happening they were leaving the website. After making the images clickable the time spent on site was 20% longer, pages per visitor went 10% up and the bounce rate improved 8 percentage points.



    Email Heat Map




    Another issue I discovered was related to the email address. As it can be seen on the heat map, some people were clicking on it; but the email address was not clickable. After making all the email addresses clickable (and together with the previously mentioned changes) the company got 6% more email requests.

    This is just an example on how small changes could make users’ life easier and improve the economic performance of a website.

    Is Privacy Protection a Good Business?

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    Facebook has been recently under fire for changing privacy settings. What started as complaints in a few blogs is starting to reach the big media and several parliament buildings around the globe. Facebook needs user data to make advertisement deals, if those users start mistrusting Facebook the business will be over.

    On one side, sharing information has many clear advantages and a lot of money can be done with that. On the other side, there are already good examples on how protecting information or giving users clear control about what they share could be beneficial for users and businesses. As interaction designers we could and should improve those experiences.

    A Venetian mask, symbol of privacy.

    Anonymity and privacy also means freedom. On the contrary, being forced to be 100% public might, in many cases, prevent people to create new things and to share what they really think. There are many things one should not say in public; consequences could be hard if those messages have to be attached by default to the speakers real name. The magic of message boards and chats on the internet beginnings was their anonymity, without that many topics would have never been discussed in a truly sincere way.

    It is clear that one benefits from others´ information. Is it possible to share information, keep the user secure and make money with it? Yes, it is; I have two good examples.

    Genius, the Apple iTunes recommendation service, is getting tons of information from users, like favorite artists, most listened songs, playlists, movies and TV shows. In order to convince people to share all that, Genius proposes sharing in an anonymous way: no, with Genius you can not see what music your friends are listening. But that´s all right, the best recommendations are done through the analysis of the data coming from thousands of users, not just your friends. Is Apple making money with Genius? I bet they do!

    Delicious is another good example of user protection. The public bookmarking service stores users´favorite websites; people allow that because in principle their data is kept private. Delicious reinforces that feeling of privacy through its interface design:

    “If you do not want personal information to be displayed for other users to see, do not check any of these boxes”, a setting on Delicious profile creation page. This is a key feature of the Delicious service, without that many people would not share many of their bookmarks, like the ones related to politics or to adult content. Delicious is clearly profiting from sharing and being protecting at the same time.

    The future

    I predict people will share even more in the future but websites like Facebook will get more pressure to offer better privacy and the design of interfaces and services that offer more intelligent ways of sharing information without compromising privacy will become a big business.

    Venetian mask picture by Misteraitch