Future of TV

By reneestumpel March 4th, 2014

Sprint 1 – Results & Feedback

Yesterday we had a small demo at TWC with our first concepts and prototype. We started with talking about our activities of the last two weeks and our plan of actions.

After this, we started with discussing our personas. In the beginning of last week, we did some user interviews regarding the Olympics. We asked them about viewing habits, which devices they used and why they watched the Olympics. We got some useful insights and decided to make some personas based on these results.

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While discussing the personas, Rutger (TWC) mentioned we didn’t cover younger people like teenagers. He thought this might be an interesting age group as well and that they are our future users.

After the feedback we showed our first concept. This concept revolves around smart TV’s who are learning from your behaviour and actions. When the TV ‘sees’ you’re bored while watching soccer, it will save this in your personal profile. Next time soccer is on, it will not notify you.

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It could also be possible that you can connect with your other devices. If you’re looking for more information on Wikipedia for example, your TV will recognize this and think that you’re interested in this subject. It will remember this and save it in your personal profile.

Before we presented this concept, we discussed if users wanted to be scanned and checked all the time. The team of TWC also mentioned this. They thought that the TV producers will not keep on devolving tools revolving around the use of camera’s in smart TV. This is something we will have to research soon.

They also mentioned that the Olympics only last 2 weeks, which might not be long enough to learn the user habits. It also might be hard to ‘read’ someone’s behaviour. If someone is relaxing on the couch and slowly falls asleep does this mean he is bored and dislikes the sport? Or does this mean he is just relaxing? Usually it will take a lot of time to get to know someone’s behaviour, let alone get conclusions out of this in just a couple of weeks. The concept was really good, but in order for it work well, a well thought recommendation system needs to be developed.

In the second concept we wanted to let the user take control. The user can choose their own camera angle and can even zoom in. The user can also ask for more information by pushing (or clicking) a button for more information. If this layover is activated you will see ‘points of interest’ where you can choose from. If you choose one you will get more information on this POI.

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The problem with this concept is that it will be hard to implement it with live tv. You will need to find a way to get all kinds of live meta data. There is no time to manipulate or curate the information.

The last concept also gave more information to the user. On the right side of the screen you will see some kind of live feed where you can choose all kind of information. (Over here, you can also see our interactive prototype)

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TWC wasn’t that enthusiastic about this concept. It wasn’t innovative enough because everybody is already doing this for a couple of years. We need to think more out of the box, include multiple devices and don’t try to put everything on the big screen.

In the upcoming weeks we need to focus on what is happing right now (take it as starting point), how we are going to gather metadata, content and avoid thinking about advertisers etc.

By frederikhermann February 28th, 2014

Sprint 1

We are at the end of sprint 1, a sprint that lasted only 5 days, and had the main focus of developing 3 concepts and 1 prototype, that we will present Monday morning for our coach and the people at TWC.

We started of by brainstorming and looking at our different ideas and concepts, then we choose 3 concepts that we wanted to work on this week, the 3 concepts were chosen based on the different research we have done the previously weeks.

The general idea behind the concepts was to give the viewer more information, but keep it simple and easy for the user. We did not user test our prototype due to lack of time, but depending on TWCs’ response to the prototype, we might user test it and develop it further.

This is our first concepts, and it will be very interesting to hear the opinions of professionals, on what things we did right, but even more important, what did we did wrong, and what we didn’t do at all.

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Here is an image of how our concept 3 could look like, a simple sidebar with a livefeed and the possibility of getting different information about the athletes, the rules of the sport, the history of the sport and the different record holders within the sport you’re currently watching.

It’s an exciting app with the possibilities of many different cool features.

If you wanna try out the clickable prototype, click on this link, this is just a clickable prototype, where the possibilities are limited, but by choosing the different elements in the top, you can gather different information about the sport you’re currently watching.

We’re gonna enjoy our weekend and start of Monday with what will be an exciting day.

By jochemderoos February 21st, 2014

An update

First of all, we moved from the MediaLab to TWC for 3 days a week. It’s nice to have a lot of experts around and apart from having a lot of knowledge and hardware there’s a pool table and some awesome swings.

The last few days everyone started to get a grasp of the project. We had some trouble setting up because of the size of the project and the fact that no one knows what our final product will look like. We have decided on some good research questions and even though the research has barely started the first ideas are already coming to the table. We are all realizing that 2016 is actually closer then we think but there are also more options than we could have imagined.

Our scrum board is finally up and running. We are settled in and our office is starting to look like a real workspace. With the help of some friendly experts the early stage is shaping up to be a good start.

User Scene:

Next week will all be about user interviews and working our way through our sprint backlog.

By frederikhermann February 11th, 2014

Tinkering Workshop at the MediaLAB

On Monday, the 10th of February, we started with a tinkering workshop. During this workshop we were introduced to the MakeyMakey and the programme Scratch. Combining these tools allows you to build creative interfaces.

After some experimenting with the tools we were tasked to come up with and build our own project. The requirements were that it had to be a physical interface and it had to be inspired by the Olympic Games.In the beginning we had different ideas but they were all a bit to big due to spacial limitations. After some more brainstorming we trimmed it down to a smaller set up. The idea was to have two people compete in a puzzle game and the one who finished first would win a trophy. The video below shows what the end result looked like (explanation below video).

As you see in the video the goal was to move the hoop along the track without touching it. A task much harder than it looks like. If you touch the track with the hoop, a sound will play to indicate this.

How it was made

We created a electrical circuit by connecting the track to the plus side of the MakeyMakey and the hoop to the ground side. So when the hoop and track were connected the circuit would be closed. In order to play the sound we made a Scratch script that would play a sound whenever the MakeyMakey would send the signal that the circuit was closed.

Also we attached the trophy to the MakeyMakey and made it play the sound of an applauding audience when someone picked it up. We did this in much the same way we did for the hoop and track part.

At the end of the workshop we had to present our project. It was a great succes as you can see in the video below.

By frederikhermann February 7th, 2014

This Happened Amsterdam

Interactive Design event

Thursday night at De Brakke Grond, This Happened Amsterdam had arranged their This Happened NL event. An event focusing on the process of building interactive media products. The event had four speakers that were given 10 minutes to present their product followed by 10 minutes of Q&A. Some of the products were already live others were still in the making. The four speakers were:

• Marie de Vos from STBY

• Christian Eckert and Andreas Wegner from Icon Incar

• Pieter Jan Pieters from The Social Project

• Luna Maurer from Studio Moniker

Marie de Vos from STBY

The first on the scene was Marie de Vos presenting a project she worked on about “dynamic boarding information above train platforms”. She worked together with ProRail and NS on the project. Marie walked us through the design process that led to a 180 meter long LED screen on the platform at Den Bosch Station. Given she only had 10 minutes at her disposal she couldn’t go to in depth with each step. She focused mainly on the research side of the process. A lot of communication went into the design process, doing several workshops with the different stakeholders, and a wide variety of quantitative and qualitative research of the traveler’s behavior. What we found interesting was the amount of time put into researching the traveler´s behavior; they used different methods to learn about the traveler’s movement on the platform. They also used much time discussing the product with stakeholders. It surprised us how close they worked with the involved parties.

Christian Eckert & Andreas Wegner from Icon Incar

Second to present were Christian Eckert and Andreas Wegner about designing HMI for cars. They were not allowed to show us their products because of the companies they work for, but they shared with us several difficulties they faced in designing interfaces for cars. For example, they told how they couldn’t use all of the latest technologies because of safety issues. As they put it, they were “designing against distraction”. Also they explained how it takes time for people to get accustomed to new technologies so they couldn’t put all of these in their new designs. Another difficulty they mentioned was the international differences. They product is meant to be used all over the world but they have to keep in mind the different cultures and laws. As we are working on a project, which will be used in the future (at the 2016 Olympics in Brazil) we were interested in how they at Icon Incar were facing the difficulties of designing for the future. When we went to ask Christian he told us that they didn’t worry that much about it. They kept in mind some of the trends, but they also went with what they wanted. Also they kept very open to make changes during their design process.

Pieter Jan Pieters from The Social Project

Next up was Pieter Jan Pieters who was presenting The Social Project. He created a piece of hardware, which would neutralize the frequency of signals in the air, disabling cell phone signals. Then he made several objects in which he incorporated the hardware: a button, a bench and a speaker. Also he thought of objects such as tables and even tennis balls. However when he started to launch the products, the cell phone companies registered a disturbance in their signals. As this type of device is also used by burglars and is illegal in the Netherlands they informed the police who than confiscated his device. What we took away from this is that we have to carefully consider the laws before we launch anything, especially because we might be using copyrighted content in our product. It also showed us how important it is to consider the stakeholders during the design process.

Luna Maurer from Stedelijk Museum

The last to present was Luna Maurer. She showed an art project, which is currently exhibited in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and is called Your Line or Mine. The idea is to give people a paper with several dots and a set of instructions on how to connect these dots. Next the paper is scanned and it will be add to the video of all the scanned papers. What Luna experienced in the creation of this project is that it’s quite hard to write clear instructions. Even after extensive testing with users it still was not perfect. Also there were many visitors who completely ignored the instructions. This resulted in the creators of the project having to review every drawing manually. For us that showed how people are going to explore every possibility within the product. It also showed how hard it is give clear instructions. This means during the process we have to consider every possible way of using it.

Helpful and inspiring

Overall the presentations showed us a lot about the whole interactive design process. The talks were very interesting and even inspiring. We got quite some input for our own project as well. It was a fun event and we’re looking forward to the next one.

CREATING TOMORROW

Future of TV

Creating interactive TV experiences for the Olympics in Rio 2016

Team

Commissioner:

Description

Sprint 1 – Results & Feedback

Sprint 1

An update

Tinkering Workshop at the MediaLAB

This Happened Amsterdam