User Interface Design Principles for Interactive Television Applications

Previous research has identified the differences in the user interface requirements between the PC and interactive TV (ITV), but there are still no design principles to address the idiosyncrasies of ITV. Interactive TV (ITV) applications gratify entertainment needs and leisure activities in a relaxed domestic context. Then, the mentality of efficiency and task completion found in traditional user interface heuristics may not be suitable for design and expert evaluation. The field of the media studies has accumulated an extensive knowledge of TV usage and viewer behavior. We applied the corresponding findings in the domain of ITV to devise user interface design principles for ITV applications. For the empirical validation, the principles were employed in the design of an interactive music TV application. The results suggest that a small set of generic design factors could support the systematic design of ITV applications and produce a design rationale that is traceable and comparable to alternative solutions, along the process of early product development. In addition, the principles could be further employed to augment expert evaluation techniques for ITV applications.