Interactive TV for the Home: An Ethnographic Study on Users' Requirements and Experiences

Interactive TV (iTV) will only succeed if user-centered solutions are provided. Despite an increasing focus on the home environment within the human–computer interaction field, there is still a lack of studies of the context home and empirical data on users' domestic activities (Blythe, Overbeeke, Monk, & Wright, 2004; Mateas, Salvador, Scholtz, & Sorensen, O'Brien, Rodden, Rouncefield, & Hughes, 1999). In this article, the results of an ethnographic study conducted during the summer 2005 as part of a field trial on iTV in the country of Salzburg, Austria, are presented. The research aim was to gain a deeper understanding of selected household types and household members, their daily habits and social background, their TV viewing behavior and experiences, and expectations on iTV. Within the research, patterns of what people do, how existing technologies facilitate their daily activities, what meanings people connect with the TV, and how iTV services can support people at home could be identified. The findings of this study and the lessons learned from the usability study during the first field trial (Bernhaupt, Ploderer, & Tscheligi, 2005) guided the design and development of the iTV services for the second field trial in spring 2006.

[1]  Leena Eronen,et al.  User Centered Research for Interactive Television , 2003 .

[2]  Richard Harper,et al.  Inside the Smart Home , 2003, Springer London.

[3]  David M. Fetterman,et al.  Ethnography: Step-by-Step , 1989 .

[4]  Jesper Simonsen,et al.  Using ethnography in contextural design , 1997, CACM.

[5]  David R. Millen,et al.  Rapid ethnography: time deepening strategies for HCI field research , 2000, DIS '00.

[6]  Mark Blythe,et al.  Funology:From Usability to Enjoyment , 2003 .

[7]  J. Lull.  Inside Family Viewing , 1990 .

[8]  R. Silverstone.  Television And Everyday Life , 1994 .

[9]  Phoebe Sengers,et al.  Making by making strange: Defamiliarization and the design of domestic technologies , 2005, TCHI.

[10]  Bonnie A. Nardi,et al.  An ethnographic study of distributed problem solving in spreadsheet development , 1990, CSCW '90.

[11]  P. Vorderer.  Interactive entertainment and beyond , 2000 .

[12]  Marc Hassenzahl,et al.  User experience - a research agenda , 2006, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[13]  Andrew F. Monk.  User-Centred Design , 2000 .

[14]  Peter C. Wright,et al.  Funology: from usability to enjoyment , 2005 .

[15]  Andy Crabtree,et al.  Ethnography in Participatory Design , 1998 .

[16]  Viswanath Venkatesh,et al.  Household Technology Use: Integrating Household Life Cycle and the Model of Adoption of Technology in Households , 2006, Inf. Soc..

[17]  Michael Jäckel.  David Gauntlett /Annette Hill: TV Living. Television, Culture and Everyday Life, London, New York: Routledge 1999 , 2001 .

[18]  Mark Blythe,et al.  Notes towards an ethnography of domestic technology , 2002, DIS '02.

[19]  Douglas A. Gentile,et al.  A normative study of family media habits , 2002 .

[20]  F. Aldrich.  Smart Homes: Past, Present and Future , 2003 .

[21]  David Gauntlett,et al.  TV Living: Television, Culture and Everyday Life , 1999 .

[22]  Richard Harper,et al.  The Organisation in Ethnography –A Discussion of Ethnographic Fieldwork Programs in CSCW , 2000, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[23]  Tom Rodden,et al.  Domestic Routines and Design for the Home , 2004, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[24]  Tom Rodden,et al.  Patterns of home life: Informing design for domestic environments , 2005, Personal Technologies.

[25]  Diomidis Spinellis,et al.  Usability Design for the Home Media Station , 2003 .

[26]  Mark Gawlinski,et al.  Interactive Television Production , 2003 .

[27]  Andrew F. Monk,et al.  User-Centred Design , 2000, HOIT.

[28]  Jean Scholtz,et al.  Engineering ethnography in the home , 1996, CHI Conference Companion.

[29]  Leslie Haddon,et al.  The Contribution of Domestication Research to In-Home Computing and Media Consumption , 2006, Inf. Soc..

[30]  Jenny Preece,et al.  Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability , 2000 .

[31]  Alex S. Taylor,et al.  Artful systems in the home , 2005, CHI.

[32]  Debby Hindus,et al.  Casablanca: designing social communication devices for the home , 2001, CHI 2001.

[33]  Tuuli Mattelmäki,et al.  Observing and probing , 2003, DPPI '03.

[35]  Alladi Venkatesh,et al.  The networked home: an analysis of current developments and future trends , 2003, Cognition, Technology & Work.

[36]  William W. Gaver,et al.  Design: Cultural probes , 1999, INTR.

[37]  Tove Arendt Rasmussen,et al.  Interactive Television social use or individual control , 2004 .

[38]  Jennifer Mankoff,et al.  When participants do the capturing: the role of media in diary studies , 2005, CHI.

[39]  Tom Rodden,et al.  At home with the technology: an ethnographic study of a set-top-box trial , 1999, TCHI.

[40]  Sonia Livingstone,et al.  Drawing Conclusions from New Media Research: Reflections and Puzzles Regarding Children's Experience of the Internet , 2006, Inf. Soc..

[41]  Oli Mival,et al.  Mutual inspiration in the development of new technology for older people. , 2003 .

[42]  M. Csíkszentmihályi,et al.  The meaning of things: Coding categories and definitions , 1981 .

[43]  Alladi Venkatesh,et al.  Computers and other interactive technologies for the home , 1996, CACM.

[44]  Alain Karsenty,et al.  Unremarkable computing , 2002, CHI.

[45]  Manfred Tscheligi,et al.  Relevance of Prior Experience in MHP Based Interactive TV Services , 2005, INTERACT.

[46]  D. Morley.  Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity , 2000 .

[47]  Sung Oh,et al.  Method to analyze user behavior in home environment , 2005, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.