Interactive Televsion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Interactive Televsion - Essay Example This new platform enables me to connect with friends with similar interests as me in terms of sporting events, programs and movies. The main idea behind Sora iTV is Fun, Choice, Convenience, Empowerment and Control. Functionalities of Sora iTV Sora iTV will have my personalized TV guide of all upcoming events and episodes for all the shows and sporting events I like. It will also list what my friends or schoolmates are watching. Another feature of Sora iTV will be discussion board, whereby I can talk to friends about our favorite programs and events. New ideas on interesting shows will be floated around and I will later include them in the list of my shows and episodes. Users of Sora iTV will take part only in discussions that have comments from their friends about the specific shows and relevant news articles about those programs and their actors. The posts will be streamed using a Twitter-like interface and filtered by show. This will be possible because the system will look for ke ywords related to specific programs. Designing the user interface of Sora iTV The design of Sora iTV aims create a large display or work area. With this in mind the controls will be pushed to the edge of the screen. Another important factor in screen design for Sora iTV is the distance between me (the viewer) and the television set. Usually in the case of a computer, I sit with two feet of the monitor. But in the case of the TV the distance is usually four to six feet from the set. What this means for the design is that text and controls must be oversized so that they are legible from a distance. The CD-I Design Handbook Philips Interactive Media Systems emphasizes the following when choosing font and color to use for interactive television user interface design: Use simply constructed sans-serif fonts. Don’t use a font size smaller than 22 points. Don’t use red as the text color. Use anti-aliasing to increase readability. Use soft, low contrast outlining or drop shado ws on text to increase the edge definition of the letters. Navigation within the interface is another consideration to make. Historically, viewing of television has been a passive action. Interactivity was limited to browsing through the channels, varying the volume and turning off the set occasionally. One thing to keep in mind when designing the user interface for iTV applications is that there won’t be a keyboard or a direct pointing device like a mouse. Most of my iTV applications will use remote control device, with four arrow keys and a select button. When the navigation is this limited, you must take care in the arrangement of navigable objects on the screen (Shneiderman 1992). For example, functional buttons should be grouped into one column while navigational buttons should be in another group. Moving from one group to the other is one click left or right. Minimize the number of button presses that the user must make to use your screens (Luther 1989). Having done tha t here is how Sora iTV user interface design will look like. Interactivity with Sora iTV Interactivity is what sets Sora iTV apart from the other available iTVs. This interactivity will be enhanced by simplicity in controls and navigation. One of the ways of interacting with Sora iTV is the ability to communicate with my friends through discussion threads. This will be enabled through a Twitter-like interface. Friends