My Home: Let Users design their own Social iTV Marianna Obrist HCI & Usability Unit, ICT&S Center, University of Salzburg Sigmund-Haffner-Gasse 18, 5020 Salzburg, Austria
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Abstract Understanding the home context leads to a better understanding of peoples activities within this special context. Thereby, it is important not to underestimate the social context in which new technologies are deployed and used. Moreover, the home context is a main place for individualization and domestication. This paper is discussing the home context as a main place for self-expression and user driven modifications around the TV. A case example for user driven modifications is presented and further discussed toward a more individualized design approach which enables users to become designers themselves. 1. Introduction The home has become a major research area in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), in particular since information and communication technologies have moved out of the office into the living room (Blythe et al., 2004). Moreover, new computing concepts such as ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence emerged and made the home an active research field (Ha et al., 2006). Technology designed for the home context must especially consider the (individual) social aspects and provide people the feeling of being at home by giving them the possibility to express themselves in the technology they use. 2. Users design Themselves Today, technology is highly integrated into the daily lives of people (Venkatesh et al., 2003). Recently, interactive systems and applications for the home context do not always provide people the services, features and interface they would like to have. Therefore, some enthusiastic people modify interactive systems in advanced and sometimes in unexpected ways (e.g. development of alternative user interfaces). Users become innovators and design their interaction with a system or product themselves. The point is, that users, not designers, determine the meaning of the technology they use, through the ways in which they incorporate them into everyday life (Dourish, 2004). With regard to interactive television (iTV) and social iTV it is important to actively engage users as co-designers and to support user innovativeness. A contemporary example for user innovativeness can be found in those growing user communities on
the Internet, where new forms of participation and cooperation emerge. The best practice example is based in the open source software community. Such grassroots initiatives are often spearheaded by passionate amateurs (Haddon et al., 2005). Moreover, empirical research already shows that between 10 to 40 percent of users engage in developing or modifying products (Von Hippel, 2005). Lead users are the category of users that are the driving force for such innovations as they show a tendency to experiment with existing products, modifying them and often creating new product innovations (Von Hippel, 2005). The focus of this paper lies on the home context, which is defined as a main place for self-expression, and on users’ engagement in modifying interactive system themselves, especially in the living room and in front of the TV. 2.1 My Home: Place for Self-Expression The home can be characterized as a major place that individuals can change or maintain as they like. People organize the home according to their needs and tastes, and they give the home a personal and unique meaning (Sebba & Churchman, 1986). People can design a lot of their homes by choosing their furniture and organizing their technologies in their home environment. They also domesticate technology to make it better fit into their life. 2.2 My TV: Active User Engagement The role of the TV viewer has altered during the last decades. From being merely a spectator, enjoying only what was broadcasted (one-to-many communication); the audience is now increasingly characterized by higher user engagement. One step towards a more active user role was the emergence of iTV. Interactive TV enables users to actively engage in front of the TV by selecting information from teletext style oriented services, by enjoying enhanced TV shows or by engaging in live interactive TV games (Gawlinski, 2003). A system which addresses the home context, a place highly characterized by individual and social needs, must allow people a higher level of modifiability and individual interactivity. The importance of a more individualized design approach, also for the design of social iTV, becomes more evident based on a case example presented in the following section.
3. Case Example: D-Box 2 The D-Box 2 is a digital set-top-box, originally released as a standard pay TV box by Premiere, a leading pay TV operator in Germany. The original developed software (Betanova) offered only few functions, was unstable and most features on the hardware side like the Ethernet network connector were unused. Some users were not satisfied with this situation and started to modify the system. Thus, around 2000, some enthusiasts loaded the DBox with Linux software in order to make use of the real (hardware) potentials of the D-Box. 3.1 Users as Designers The most interesting aspects regarding the D-Box 2 example are the user driven modifications of the user interface. The original interface was replaced by alternative user interfaces (e.g. Neturino, Enigma, Lcars). Neutrino is the most commonly used user interface within the D-Box 2 community. It provides a functional, simple and clearly structured interface comparing it to the original user interface (see Figure 1 and 2).
Figure 1: Screenshot of the original User Interface Betanova.
Figure 2: Screenshot of the Neutrino User Interface designed by Users.
The modified D-Box 2 provides the end-user also an amazing function variety, like for example: sending the audio/video data stream over the network; a simple game console; a video and MP3Player; image gallery with slide show function; weather information or a stock exchange ticker as well as communication features, e.g. receiving short e-mail messages or being notified about incoming calls. A simple digital TV receiver has become a modern multimedia centre. 3.2 System Community The large (open source) community around this interactive system is one of the main driving forces for the huge and consistent number of user modifications provided over the last years. This example emphasises the usefulness and need to understand user driven modifications and innovations. Designers should give people more control over the interface and follow a more open and advanced design approach by giving users the possibility to design themselves. User driven modifications can provide valuable input for designers on which
features and applications users would like to have and how they want to be socially engaged while watching TV (beyond social interaction in the home context towards social interaction through the TV). 4 Conclusion With regard to the increasing growth of users’ activities in modifying interactive systems themselves, the importance of more individualized design concepts and improved design approaches becomes clear. The game industry, for instance, has rapidly learned to support the active role of gamers by allowing the users and the community to modify and improve the source code of original games (Camargo, 2006). Thus, users should be supported to design their own social iTV or almost parts of it themselves in order to fulfil their individual needs and their need for self-expression in the home context. There is still a lack for research addressing user innovativeness in the design of new systems or products. In order to close this gap an ethnographic study was conducted by using a new methodological variation of cultural probes, called creative cultural probes (see Bernhaupt et al, 2007). References Bernhaupt, R., Obrist, M., Weiss, A., Beck, E., & Tscheligi, M. (2007). Trends in the Living Room and Beyond. To be published in: Proceedings EuroiTV 2007. Blythe, M. A., Overbeeke, K., Monk, A. F., & Wright, P. C. (Eds.) (2004). Funology: From Usability to Enjoyment. Dordrecht et al.: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Camargo, C. (2006). Modding: Changing the Game, Changing the Industry. In ACM Crossroads: Entertainment Technology, 13 (2), 5-6. Dourish, P. (2004). What we talk about when we talk about context. In Journal of Personal & Ubiquitous Computing, 8(1), 19-30. Gawlinski, M. (2003). Interactive Television Production. Oxford: Focal Press. Ha, T. S., Jung, J. H., & Oh, S. Y. (2006). Method to analyze user behavior in home environment. In Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 10, 110-121. Haddon, L, Mante, E., Sapio, B., Kommonen, K-H, Fortunati, L. & Kant, A. (Eds.) (2005) Everyday Innovators. Researching the Role of Users in Shaping ICTs. Springer: Dordrecht. Sebba, R., & Churchman, A. (1986). The Uniqueness of the Home. In Architecture and Behavior, 3(1), 7-24. Venkatesh, A., Kruse, E., & Chuan-Fong Shih, E. (2003). The networked home: an analysis of current developments and future trends. In Cognition Technology and Work Journal, 5(1), 23-32. Von Hippel, E. (2005). Democratizing Innovation. Cambridge/London: MIT Press.
