David Geerts

Supporting the social uses of television: sociability heuristics for social tv

Various social television systems and applications, enabling remote communication and interaction between viewers, are currently in development. Although usability guidelines exist for interactive television to ensure a usable system, there are no sociability guidelines for designing or evaluating the social interaction these systems enable. In this paper we present twelve sociability heuristics for evaluating social TV, based on several user studies with social TV systems.

Enhancing social sharing of videos: fragment, annotate, enrich, and share

Media consumption is an inherently social activity, serving to communicate ideas and emotions across both small- and large-scale communities. The migration of the media experience to personal computers retains social viewing, but typically only via a non-social, strictly personal interface. This paper presents an architecture and implementation for media content selection, content (re)organization, and content sharing within a user community that is heterogeneous in terms of both participants and devices. In addition, our application allows the user to enrich the content as a differentiated personalization activity targeted to his/her peer-group. We describe the goals, architecture and implementation of our system in this paper. In order to validate our results, we also present results from two user studies involving disjoint sets of test participants.

The implications of program genres for the design of social television systems

In this paper, we look at how television genres can play a role in the use of social interactive television systems (social iTV). Based on a user study of a system for sending and receiving enriched video fragments to and from a range of devices, we discuss which genres are preferred for talking while watching, talking about after watching and for sending to users with different devices. The results show that news, soap, quiz and sport are genres during which our participants talk most while watching and are thus suitable for synchronous social iTV systems. For asynchronous social iTV systems film, news, documentaries and music programs are potentially popular genres. The plot structure of certain genres influences if people are inclined to talk while watching or not, and to which device they would send a video fragment. We also discuss how this impacts the design and evaluation of social iTV systems.

Linking an integrated framework with appropriate methods for measuring QoE

Quality of Experience (QoE) has recently gained recognition for being an important determinant of the success of new technologies. Despite the growing interest in QoE, research into this area is still fragmented. Similar - but separate - efforts are being carried out in technical as well as user oriented research domains, which are rarely communicating with each other. In this paper, we take a multidisciplinary approach and review both user oriented and technical definitions on Quality of Experience (including the related concept of User Experience). We propose a detailed and comprehensive framework that integrates both perspectives. Finally, we take a first step at linking methods for measuring QoE with this framework.

Fragment, tag, enrich, and send: Enhancing social sharing of video

The migration of media consumption to personal computers retains distributed social viewing, but only via nonsocial, strictly personal interfaces. This article presents an architecture, and implementation for media sharing that allows for enhanced social interactions among users. Using a mixed-device model, our work allows targeted, personalized enrichment of content. All recipients see common content, while differentiated content is delivered to individuals via their personal secondary screens. We describe the goals, architecture, and implementation of our system in this article. In order to validate our results, we also present results from two user studies involving disjoint sets of test participants.

In front of and behind the second screen: viewer and producer perspectives on a companion app

The growing success of tablets and smartphones has shifted the focus of the interactive TV industry to the introduction of second screen applications. One example is second screen companion apps that offer extra information about a television program, often synchronized with what happens on screen. In this paper, we investigate a second screen companion app, from the perspective of the viewers and producers of such apps. Based on observations and interviews with viewers and producers, and actual usage data of a companion app from Google Analytics, we present several insights and recommendations for how to design companion apps related to ease of use, timing, social interaction, attention and added value.

Comparing voice chat and text chat in a communication tool for interactive television

Talking during the course of a television program is something that has been done almost since the introduction of the television in the household, and is one of the most important social uses of television. Interactive television extends this concept beyond the family household, making it possible to talk with family and friends at remote households. This particular study looks at two modes of communication, more specifically voice chat and text chat, and what the advantages and disadvantages are of these systems when communicating while watching television. The results show that voice chat is considered more natural and direct, and makes it easier to keep on following the program. Text chat is more preferred by younger users and users having more experience with chatting on computers, and is therefore interesting to use in interactive services specifically aimed at youngsters. In both cases, our study shows that such systems should be carefully designed to divide attention between watching and communicating in such a way that distraction from the television program is minimized.

Videogames in therapy: a therapist's perspective

This paper describes a user and task analysis that was conducted in order to examine the role of therapists in the use of video games in therapy. The results show that video games were used often, but improvements could be made to make them more effective for the therapist. From these results recommendations for video game design were derived. Recommendations include that a therapeutic video game should be easy to startup and configure, should allow the therapist to support a patient during play, and should support the therapist in tracking a patients performance.

Social Interactive Television: Immersive Shared Experiences and Perspectives

htmlabstractTelevision, since its invention, has been considered to be a social link between people. Continually enhanced by innovation, the next frontier for this technological phenomenon will focus on the actual natural capabilities of the medium. Social Interactive Television: Immersive Shared Experiences and Perspectives combines academic and industry research to provide the first publication of its kind to discuss the future emergence of experiences and services through interactive television. Concentrating on system and interaction design, as well as evaluation methods that focus on social experiences around interactive television, this book provides practitioners, academicians, researchers, and developers with the most relevant, current, and interesting findings on the topic.

From IPTV to Synchronous Shared Experiences: Challenges in Design: Distributed Media Synchronization

This paper discusses results from research related to the use of television as a device that supports social interaction between close-knit groups in settings that include more than two locations, each location being potentially equipped with more than one camera. The paper introduces the notion of a framing experience, as a specific scenario or situation within which social communication takes place. It reports on the evaluation of some of the key attributes of social communication through semi-structured interviews, with 16 families across four European countries. The inferences drawn from this study are reduced to four system capabilities including the ability to support: excitement, engagement and entertainment; high quality, reliable audiovisual communications; flexibility and adaptability sufficient to support the unpredictable and reactive nature of human interaction and discourse. These system requirements are, in turn, reduced to a number of technology challenges which if solved will help enable effective social communications between groups, mediated by the television. These technology challenges include: high quality reliable audio visual communication; interaction orchestration, multimedia interpretation and multimedia composition. Finally the paper reflects on the impact the use of framing experiences, such as those described here, could have on strategy and policy for service providers and regulators.