Analyzing and improving the overall user experience for a TV-ecosystem

Analyzing and improving the overall user experience for a TV-ecosystem

Serras Marques, D.

Van Kuijk, J. (mentor)
Boess, S. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

Master of Science Design for Interaction

2012-05-16

The level of complexity in consumer electronic products is one of the main concerns for Innovation and Development (I&D) departments in companies manufacturing and selling household appliances. Nowadays, consumer electronic products tend to have more and more functions resulting in complexity increase that makes it harder for users to understand these products (Kuijk, 2009). On top of that, the previous user and expert evaluation test from Philips (PRC 1113) noticed an increased number of usability problems with regard the operability of the connected devices to the television. The Philips OneUX (“One User Experience”) is the project program initiated by Philips to offer users a unified way of working their TV sets with their connected devices. Philips features software with the name of EasyLink that shares the functionality between TV sets and connected devices through a cable. This software is present on every Philips device older than 2009. The OneUX intention is the ideal focus towards offering users a shared way of working without usability problems, and thus, the formation of a TV-ecosystem. Besides that, the User-Centered Design (UCD) approach aims to design with and from the user point of view and focuses on innovative solutions that improve the usage of a product, system or service. The reason to adopt a user-centered design approach in usability analysis of consumer electronics products is to come up with a better quality of the interaction between the user and the product-system (Wever et. al 2008). Thus, this thesis follows a UCD methodology based on qualitative research performed in three main stages, namely analysis, ideation and evaluation. A cognitive walkthrough process has been used to assess the usability problems of the considered user-centered functionality resulting in the identification of its origins. Hence, this process has focused on identifying how users use their TV-ecosystem; get their expectations, needs and perceived qualities when interacting with their TV sets so that a thorough design concept proposal could be developed from these inputs. Consequently, the problem definition stated that the origins of the usability problems were due to a poor integration of the system functions causing user unawareness of the functionality. The concept proposal is the solution that resulted from the application of design criteria obtained in this project. The design criteria established three main focuses of functional integration to address the origins of the usability problems. Thus, access, execution and compatibility of system functions should be better integrated with the qualities of the interaction perceived by users to deal with the user unawareness. Consequently, the concept proposal has originated two parts: first, the system function and second, the system functionality discovery, which offers users a faster execution with just one single press through understandable access with familiar keys. The integration for discovery focused on improving the provided onscreen messages to allow users leverage the performance of their TV-ecosystem in a certain activity. Subsequently, the integration for access and execution prioritise the reduction on the number of steps by using the keys that were familiar to users to offer a faster and easier operability. The context of the thesis is situated within my graduation project of the Master of Design for Interaction in the Delft University of Technology (TUDelft) in The Netherlands. The company where the project has been developed is the Philips Television Department, currently known as Philips BG TV Innovation Site, in Eindhoven (The Netherlands). It supports the Business with its innovation and business creation processes. Hence, it focuses on future products, business and works on a continuing program of front-end innovation. Furthermore, it works in partnership with the other innovation sites to drive successful innovation and development programs to enable the Business to deliver key differentiators. This project gives relevant input to the Site on how users perceive the current way of working of their TV sets. In addition, the resulted design concept proposal means to the Site a rich input on how to integrate the system functions to match user expectations and needs. To sum up, this thesis concludes with a suitable conceptual model for TV-ecosystems to improve their user satisfaction.

Mental Models
TV-ecosystem
Conceptual Models
User expectation
Seamless Systems
User Experience

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:f46cf8e5-e611-45bb-95fe-9eef30fc5d01

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2012 Serras Marques, D.