User Experience and Degree Usability for Smart Televisions UI and Hardware
Abstract
I want to understand the relation between the ease of use on the device in terms of UI and the hardware, mainly the remote, as well as how long it takes the user to gain a superior ability when working with the device and on the device. I will be taking a focus on Apple TV for the project but will be reviewing other smart TVs as well. I think it’s interesting to know whether or not the users use the interface to their advantage or if they find themselves that we difficulty with its many menus as well as the barge volumes of content at the start with little to no tutorial or spacing. Then I would like users to choose which device personally has the most significant interface and rate them and, from there, have a discussion on factors that makes one superior to another. Finally, I want to evaluate overall the strengths and weaknesses of the system and how they could potentially be improved by incorporating both things from preferred devices as well as outside ideas that may improve the device.
Introduction
Understanding and interpreting the interconnected relationship between the user end user interface for intelligent television systems. I’ve taken an in-depth look into three independent television systems, including Apple TV, Roku, and Hulu, to understand how users interact with them and understand the correlation between ease of use, simplicity, and the required time for advancement in system comprehension. A synopsis and hypothetically improving both user interface on a software and hardware level.
Method
A few select participants were brought individually into a room and given a set list of instructions for four different types of smart televisions Apple TV, a Hulu device, Roku, and the Amazon fire stick, with the focus being on the Apple TV. The research that was conducted on the participants included people were to conduct a full TV login followed by moving through the interface to a select television show of their choice, then it was to add it to their favorites, find the show in their favorites and subsequently navigate the menu to see both the movie and show recommendations as well as find the Bluetooth setting. These were chosen as it would require each individual to get acquainted with both the remote, the login, and the basic UI that an average individual may use throughout the day when watching television. This would be done subsequently on each TV in differing orders of which one went first per participant. At the conclusion of the device, a rating would be given following the completion of all devices. Another rating would be given to each device again. Then a discussion would take place where they talk about the pros and cons of both the remotes and UI interface, as well as anything they believe would help benefit the device or smart TVs as a whole.
Research/Discussion
To begin with, I started an examination of the Apple TV, I began to examine many of the features that existed such as ease of use of the remote and comparing it to other similar remotes as well as the conventional Universal Television remote and trying to find both the commonality and distinctive features among these devices while also gauging the opinion both my family and friends, the data of which will be shown in the infographic below. From the Research and Data, I was able to come to some conclusions that many of the average intelligent television users find the more simplistic and small remotes including both the apple and Roku remotes to be far more favorable as opposed to the much larger conventional television remotes and though there is a case to be made that the other ones are more complicated simply because they require more complex button layouts I posed the same question that maybe our conventional use of television channels/channel surfing has become an outdated system of navigation through this he is somewhat irrelevant to the topic at hand I think it is essential to make the distinction about the impact of the modern user interface that has been created through streaming platforms these smart televisions that have overall been a stark improvement over the past interfaces. Moving back to the remote context, one of the common factors that came up repeatedly was the touch screen or touchpad on the apple remote. Many people had very positive things to say about it, though, over time, some individuals began complaining about missed clicks and accidental clicks being more likely to happen with the remote.
Many individuals liked the slim design have both remotes. Still, complaints were raised that the Apple TV remote simply to think that it was easily lasted on a couch misplaced, making it difficult to find. With no real discerning features, it may blend in easily. well, the Roku remote was larger and contained buttons; people found it to be unintuitive and requiring a change. Most were not dissatisfied that it contained buttons but that the ability to navigate menus easily was hampered by the lateral movement lacking the fluid movement with many newer styles of the remote.
The user interface from apple television had overall highly satisfactory results; I think this is certainly a reflection of apple as a company that prides itself on the ability to make simple and easy user interfaces as well as making it very easy for iOS and Mac devices to easily communicate with one another and be navigated by a user that has used a similar product. as most of the individuals that were interviewed had iPhones, they were easily able to navigate the menus of apple television after booting it on with little to no issue in regard to the change of the medium. Though an interesting result of surveying the people was that more people actually found the Roku-type system to be far easier to navigate and connect devices to, as many individuals had trouble finding certain features they wanted to use or entirely being able to use apple play or other similar functions as opposed to simply using Bluetooth. and while in the end, more people were satisfied with using apple play and another similar type of connectivity they found it often at the beginning difficult to understand or operate requiring a higher level of mental investment to initially begin using the device as intended. I also found that users were able to pick up the devices quite quickly and learn the format/UI of each device very quickly whether this is due to being accustomed to the standardization of much of our technology or that users are accustomed to tech as it has been in our lives so long, in any case, all users were able to quickly navigate menus they were unfamiliar with and complete the task. To discover what exactly led to the fast times navigating the interfaces I would have to conduct more research with a more in-depth look at the prior users’ experience not just with Smart TVs but with Tech as a Whole.
Further Discussion
The below points were important during the discussion phase of the research, I thought the participants made a very compelling few points about outsmarting a common problem that faces users in this case, losing a remote I thought it would bring up a great discussion about developments for improvement as well as talking about using your behavior.
- Participants wanted a way to find the remote if and when the remote is lost I recommendation was given to be able to use similar to Find My iPhone type sounds that will be played when the remote is lost by simply pressing to button either on the television or on a paired device such as a phone.
- participants talked about Pairing phones to televisions and using them as remotes while also making this extremely easy as opposed to requiring extra downloads of apps and opening other applications and waiting for the device to be found simply make it as simple as possible, requiring the least number of steps to use the phone as a remote device.
Navigating settings and troubleshooting came up quite a bit as many of the individuals being surveyed ran into very similar problems, such as trying to change individual settings inside of the device for personal comfort. This might be able to be improved upon by having more troubleshooting windows and maybe a tutorial slash hints throughout the beginning operation of the television similar to that of modern video games that, over time, once the individual becomes more comfortable with the device, the hints, and tutorial like in her face, begins to fade away as the user has gained enough experience.
- There is a desire that streaming services on televisions should have more uniformity amongst one another as switching between platforms sometimes leads to specific problems as each platform’s UI is slightly different leading to some confusion when switching between them.
- When users described their experience most if not all complained about logging in. The participants wanted a very quick and simple way to log into accounts on televisions, such as a Netflix or Hulu account, easily without requiring the use of a remote and a difficult television keyboard, such as the hypothetical use of QR codes for phones to scan in and sign in.
Conclusion
Overall, I think That in the case of her advancements in technology relating to television and smart televisions, in particular, we have made some extraordinary strides, in particular those in correlating to users’ interface with those devices, but I think there is always room for improvement, and I would say that most UX specialists would agree, for the case of these devices there is certainly power in the development and constant improvements.
An interesting extrapolation from the information gathered and then converted into graphs, as shown below, is that people across the board seem to correlate the UI and remote very similarly in their apparent ratings of the technology, in this case, apple TVs. It’s very interesting that they correlated so significantly. I thought that people would find either one or the other two, to be independently distinct and not reflect as much in their opinion of both the UI and remote, whether this is due to the small sample size or opinions reflecting from the brand word devices of hold maybe seeing if a larger amount of data was compiled and experiment was run with a greater number of variables. But it is still interesting to see that there may be a correlation between hardware and software inextricably tied to one another and that the individual themselves rate both of those things together as opposed to independently viewing the systems apart from one another. I would like to look into this further at some point as it may further shed light on the development of improvements to UI and hardware may actually, in turn, develop more excellent reception if the individual using the technology have satisfactory results with all parts of the technology.
When it came to the other information, such as preferred smart device, I wasn’t too shocked as they generally correlated with the devices that the individuals had in their given room, and I think that most often, the thing that I was told is that they only really cared about the devices they’ve used and branching out to new devices really wasn’t something they were keen on doing or had much knowledge and only by sitting them down and having them share each other’s televisions and see what they like and didn’t like was I able to further he research, but in the end, most individuals ended up picking the television they had already chosen to be their own and none of the people who participated in this ended up choosing a different device. I would like to do this on further sample size and have it that the individuals being tested on can have your biases but maybe try to do the research in a less biased environment to remove the contamination of prior experiences and consumer behavior being reflected more than the actual principles of interface and application.
Data and Diagrams
Feature Image
