How to lose friends & alienate people

Abstract

The single physical remote control, paired to a media sys tem, is no longer necessarily the only (or indeed primary) mechanism of control, with new input modalities (e.g. ges ture) and mechanisms (e.g. mobile devices) allowing any one to contribute to the input and control. This paper in vestigates the potential for extending single-user interfaces in order to support multi-user use, as a means of utilizing new inputs without having to abandon the familiar interfaces, control management behaviours and mental models that users have established. A survey was conducted investigating ex isting behaviours for managing control in terms of prevalence and acceptability. These behaviours and potential new ones were then incorporated into a multi-user system where man agement of control was virtualized, using mobile devices for input. We found that behaviours derived from existing ones (e.g. passing/taking control) were at worst functionally equiv alent to, and in some cases superior to, managing a single physical remote control. We suggest that sharing single-user TV systems implementing these behaviours offers a viable alternative to concurrent use TV systems.

A review of collocated multi-user TV

“…5 Responses to the question "How acceptable do you find the following ways of controlling media systems?" from [30]. Responses were Likert-type five point scale, ranging from completely unacceptable to completely acceptable, and converted into 0-4 scale for mean acceptability (labeled in grey circles, higher is better) for relative comparisons.…”

“…McGill et al [30] attempted to side-step many of these issues by developing schemes for mediating between inputs in a social group based upon the existing management behaviours of the single physically shared remote control, in what was termed "mediation of control". In a survey (n = 156) they found that with respect to these existing management behaviours, that control was a commodity: "First come, first serve", "passing control around", "negotiation e.g.…”

It Takes Two (To Co-View)

“…In SDG, they typically share use of the interface presented, e.g. [13], or partition the display in order to accommodate multiple interfaces or activities, e.g. [31].…”

“…There are a variety of ways in which TV displays can be shared, from proxemic approaches employed by Ballendat et al [2] where the display adapted to the angle and proximity of whomever was interacting with it, to approaches where the sharing was based on social behaviours [13]. However, in all cases, interfaces and interactions have likely been compromised by the fact that there is inevitably only one TV view to be shared, limiting the potential for independent activity.…”

“…These approaches allow for both independent (device-based) and shared (TV-based) activity, and some awareness of what others are doing. However, when second screening (using a secondary device alongside the TV) it can be problematic to actively or passively share activity with others [14], whilst interacting with others on the same TV display is often poorly facilitated [13] and potentially distracting, with no capability for truely independent views. Additionally, the phones, tablets or other devices being used are often inferior to the TV in some important respects, for example, in terms of size, casual accessibility to others in the room, and socialization, with users in their own private "digital bubble" [8].…”