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Tag Archives: UI/UX

My Analysis of Google TV’s Ten Foot UI in Nikkei Electronics

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I recently had the opportunity to critique the Logitech Revue’s ten foot UI for Nikkei Electronics, a Japanese trade magazine that “offers prompt reports, to-the-point commentaries and in-depth analysis on advanced technologies.”

Phil Keys, US Correspondent for NE, approached me for this project. He wanted an expert opinion on how to build a better interactive user experience for the home theater. I have known Phil since my days at Sling and Mediabolic and working with him was a real honor and privilege.

I applied user-centric design principles to grade the Logitech Revue and point out its strengths and weaknesses. My review was then translated and printed up, along with photos of the Logitech UI. Here is a small sample of the article.

Thanks to Nikkei Electronics for the opportunity to deliver Smart TV best practices to a global audience.

Quick Thoughts: buying a new TV, cord-cutting, smart TVs, delicious shutdown, online privacy

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I'm on a Truck. With a TV.

Buying a new TV:  I came to the realization that my manroom, while great, was inadequately equipped with a mere 50″ screen.  So I decided to go big (then go home).  Spent a long while researching options, ended up with the Samsung PN63C590, Samsung PN63C8000, and the LG 60PK950 as my top three choices.  Two of these three had 3D and Internet connectivity, the other was just a big honking 63″ screen.  I went with the big honking screen and skipped on the frills.  I realized I don’t much like the current 3D experience in theaters or homes (makes me a little nauseous), and the likelihood that I’d want to frequently watch 3D at home was pretty low.  Regarding Internet apps, I’m not really impressed with most of the available apps, and I’m not very convinced that the current platforms won’t be obsolete within 12-18 months (looks like I’m not the only one who feels that way on both topics).

In a nutshell – the TV is awesome, manroom now operating at near-100% efficiency.

Cord-Cutting: So my new TV is great, and also huge.  And there’s an interesting downside to it being huge – the gaffes of lower quality video are worse than ever.  As soon as everything was hooked up, I turned on the NHL HD channel (sports channels seem to be at the top of the quality spectrum in the HD channel lineup).  All I could see were the jaggies and other terrible aftereffects of the highly compressed video Comcast delivers to my house.  So how did I make my TV look good?  I turned on my Xbox!  I think this “faux” HD experience is something that actually could cause cord-cutting in 2011 – far more than Smart TVs will.  More on this over on the Stage Two blog.

Smart TVs:  Speaking about Smart TVs (the continuity in this post would astound my high school English teacher), I read an article on “What Smart TVs need to Succeed” with the highlights being: Unlimited Content Access, Extensive Use of Apps, and Immersive Experience.  I think I understand that perspective, but I also think it is missing the boat.  People tend to compare Smart TVs to Smart Phones.  If you recall, the first several *years* of smart phones were some truly terrible products.  But when it comes to phones, that’s “ok” because they are low cost (relative to TVs) and owners expected to replace them in fairly short cycles.  TVs, on the other hand, are expensive and consumers tend to replace infrequently (unless of course they have awesome manrooms that warrant the upgrade).  A generation of underwhelming Smart TVs will likely put a damper on the entire industry.  What Smart TVs really need to succeed is great, intuitive, television-like user experiences.  And I will be blunt by saying none of them do it right now.  And I don’t see this changing for at least the first half of 2011.  Which is why we’ve got a new thing cooking in Stage Two’s labs, all about making a really good TV user experience.  Will show ya next year.

Del.icio.us shutdown:  Just like everyone else in the Web 2.0 era,  I used Delicious for about 45 minutes back in the mid 2000’s, then stopped.  I know there’s still a solid fan base, and a lot more people found it a lot more useful than I did, but Yahoo’s let it languish since about 6 months after purchase.  Other than buying a better domain for it, it doesn’t seem like the company cared about it one bit.  And now they are shutting it down.  I think this is pretty terrible, and as I tweeted… “irony of delicious shut-down? bartz could’ve made only $46.2M last year and still had a full-time TEAM on *improving* the product…”  Shame on them.  I’m sure there’s some great spreadsheet somewhere that shows why its the smart business decision, but the audacity of the entire Yahoo situation is just plain infuriating.  Highly recommended reading: Thomas Hawk’s letter to Carol Bartz.

Online privacy:  The entire concept of privacy is up for grabs these days.  Some feel it’s dead, some feel it must be protected at all costs.  I sit closer to the “protect my privacy” camp, and as a result am encouraged to see the government taking some form of action.  Unfortunately, I don’t know how much actual good it will do, but since the industry isn’t self-regulating, I have to assume it can’t make things too much worse.  I remain convinced that the mega-millionaires who run the companies who effectively control our online privacy have the incorrect moral incentives in place, especially considering they can pay their way out of the issues the rest of us face.

New TEDTalks iPad app is good – here's how to make it great

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I was thrilled to discover the new TEDTalks app for my iPad this morning, and quickly installed and liked much of the experience.  There they are, over 700 amazing Talks to listen to.  This is particularly sweet for me as I watch a TEDTalk on my iPad virtually every morning whilst on the bus to the office, currently obtained through the suboptimal process of subscribing to the podcast in iTunes, and syncing to the iPad.  And if I may slide for a moment here, I can’t believe in 2010 there’s still anything that has to “sync” via a wire.  But I digress, back to TED.

In just a few minutes of use I quickly realized the app was content-rich, but not feature-rich.  While the “Inspire Me” feature is extremely well done (it’s all about length of video – this is a key realization most entertainment/content people need to clue in on), I felt it was otherwise a little flat. In fact, it’s not going to be very useful for my personal needs, and I’m concerned that’ll be true for others as well.  So in my support of TED, and by the way – I genuinely believe that if all people watched TED Talks the world would actually be a better place – I thought I’d quickly jot out the notes to make it better for users such as myself.

  1. Add search
    The browse works great, but there’s no search.  So when I see a tweet from a friend about a given TED Talk, I can’t find it without browsing for it.  And, to boot, I need to know the category/tag that applies to the talk to find it.  While we’re at it, make search by keyword and author too.
  2. Add alphabetical browsing
    Per above, at present you need to know how the Talk is categorized to find it.  Personally, I’d like to find something just by browsing a list of titles.
  3. Add sharing features
    At the end of virtually every TEDTalk, I want to share it with someone, whether a peer, my team, a friend or family member, or the entire world on Twitter.  Add simple “tweet this” and “like this” and “email a link to this” TEDTalk to every clip.  Also, the link should probably share the YouTube or TED.com version of the clip.
  4. Add a history/watched list
    Once I’ve watched a few dozen videos, I find it hard to remember if I’ve seen one, or hard to remember the exact title of one if I want to reshare it.  A simple history feature is essential.  And in the would-be-nice category?  Show me “You Watched this on MMDDYY” on the video preview page if I come back to it.  Also, add a “mark viewed” feature along the way, in case I’ve watched the Talk on another platform.
  5. Incorporate social features
    Since everyone’s busy “liking” everything else via Facebook these days, would be great to see in a video profile page that friends of mine have liked something.
  6. Add download controls
    Once I begin a download, there appears no way to delete the download, queue for later, or otherwise manage whats going on.
  7. Add more “cool views”
    Timelines. Maps. Duration.  etc.
  8. Integrate with other platforms
    There’s the TED site, YouTube, the iPad app, a forthcoming iPhone app, a Boxee app, the iTunes podcast, and I’m sure more to come.  Assume I am using more than one method to consume the content, then allow me to integrate from one to the other.  In other words, let me favorite something on your site, then see that on my iPad app.

I think the “1.0” version of the app is probably pretty decent for most people.  If you have even a few free minutes and an Internet connection and want to get inspired, this app will certainly do the trick.  Hopefully these ideas can help inspire team TED to take it just a bit further!

Quick Hits: Sony Remote Monstrosity, Early Revue Reviews, Android #1?, iPhone-to-TV, Congrats Foundry Group!

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Sony Remote Monstrosity
Engadget got a sneak peak of the Sony/Google TV remote control.  It’s either hideous, or simply an internal prototype used for them to develop with.  I wish it was the latter, but bet it’s the former.  Over on the Stage Two blog (I’ve been doing a lot more blogging there recently, it’s not just us pushing client work, give it a read!) I go into specifics of what’s wrong with it, and also tangible steps on how to improve it.

Early Revue Reviews
Saw a quick hit on CrunchGear today, I’m in complete disagreement with everything they say that makes it “good”.  My highlight nitpick is their closing remark: “As we said before, the real initial value will come from the camera that Logitech is selling for video chats on the TV.”  The real value of a $299 device is that you can hook up a $149 camera to it to do video chat?  Really?  That is going to move the needle on Revues?  Hint: no way.

Elsewhere, my friend Harry calls it the Swiss Army Knife of Internet TV products.  I’d say that’s a great analogy, but follow up with my biggest concern: the TV is the one place we don’t want something like a Swiss Army Knife. See, those Knives are handy to have around in a pinch, but in every way fall short of being really useful for a long period of time.  Yes, it’s cool to have a philips head screwdriver in your back pocket when camping, but I wouldn’t put together IKEA furniture with one, that’s when you need the actual screwdriver – aka the single purpose product that works really really well.

I’m maintaining my position that Google TV 1.0 is not ready for consumer primetime, and neither the Sony nor Logitech solutions are compelling to the mainstream.  Sorry to my friends who work at those companies, but this just isn’t what it needs to be for a big win.

Android #1?
I saw one of those big flashy attention-grabbing headlines today “Android Most Popular Operating System in U.S. Among Recent Smartphone Buyers”.  Beyond my general disdain for Android (though I will freely admit the HTC Incredible running Android 2.2 is leaps and bounds ahead of my old Eris, but still has lots and lots wrong with it – for another time), I hate headlines like these.  What would be MORE interesting?  What is the popularity of Android specifically on AT&T?  That’s at least apples-to-apples comparison (pun fully intended). Of course Android is going to hit the top spot, this is inevitable, not interesting.

Now what would be interesting?  Well, since this is arguably all about a landgrab for developers to adopt platforms, how about an analysis that talks about which platform is making the most money to developers? Until Android/Google makes the process of buying (and selling) apps easier for everyone, the money is still flowing to Cupertino.

iPhone-to-TV
The newest version of Netflix for iPhone enables watching the movies on a TV, rather than on the phone itself.  Very cool, nice novelty feature.  But when I see a phrase like “Who needs an Apple TV now?” I get reminded of how often people in the industry aren’t thinking these things through very much (no offense to the author of that particular blog post).  To be clear – a phone, even an iPhone, does not replace a TV dedicated device, now or ever.  Wrong device for the wrong purpose.

What if you need to make a phone call mid-movie?

What if your phone runs out of battery?

What if your phone drops the signal (apparently those iPhones are known to do that from time to time)?

What if you want to put the movie on, then sit 8-10′ away from the TV, and, say, pause or rewind the movie?

etc.

Congrats Foundry Group!
Just wanted to take a second to congratulate Brad, Ryan, Jason, and Seth at Foundry Group for raising their latest fund! I’ve had a long history with the guys and a lot of their investments, and since they are one of the few VCs who love the consumer gadget space, wanted to give them a little shout out here.  Keep up the great work, and keep finding the cool gadgets!

How-to: Make a Better Boxee Box App

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In part 2 of our series on how to make better ten foot user experiences for PC/TV/Internet convergence devices, we take a look at Boxee Box apps.  The Boxee downloadable app for Windows/Mac/Linux is pretty popular, and has apps from tons of different sources.  In the Boxee Box by D-Link (full disclosure: I have a professional relationship with them, which has nothing to do with this post), however, the usage model is probably going to be quite different than the computer-based download.  The user experience for the embedded environment, plus a remote with limited (though very cool) keyboard, and no mouse interaction, combined with a changing user demographic, means a different way to think about apps is required.  Hopefully a lot of app developers are realizing these differences, and beginning to update their apps in advance of the product launch this fall.  If not, here are some tips to help get you going!

  1. Avoid Input Fields At All Costs
  2. Create Consistent Remote Interaction
  3. There is no Back Button
  4. Make it Move!
  5. Redirect for Account Creation
  6. Include a “Sit Back and Watch” Mode
  7. Your Boxee Box App CANNOT Be “Your Website Only Way Bigger”
  8. Keep Your Menus Visible When Needed!
  9. Your App Needs a Social Life
  10. HD is Pretty

Click here for the details.

Click here for the Top 10 Tips to make a better Google TV Site.