User Interface Holds the Key to OTT Success
Posted by Emma K Wells on March 11, 2011
The OTT world is growing increasingly complex: consumers can watch OTT content on connected boxes, TV platforms, gaming consoles, and through content services.
This level of clutter makes it hard for businesses to know where to start (never mind the complexity consumers face when looking to buy).
With so many options, the user interface becomes a true point of differentiation.
When designing the interface, it is important to keep in mind that the average consumer is not tech savvy. When a viewer sits down in front of the TV, they want to relax and unwind. The last thing they want to do re-learn how to watch TV, navigating complex interfaces to find what they want to watch.
Content discovery pathways provided by the user interface are key to helping consumers navigate the changing world of OTT TV. There are two major scenarios that cover just about every content discovery journey:
- This consumer knows exactly what they want to watch- perhaps they have seen an ad or have watched a previous episode. The interface here needs to help them find what they want, with the minimum number of steps and accurate results. Search and category filtering is ideal for this scenario.
- This consumer doesn’t know what they want to watch. They have already seen the shows they like, and are looking for something new and interesting. Recommendations, editorial content, and social network connections integrated into the interface help them discover relevant content.
The connected TV market is on the verge of entering the mass market: a cutting edge user interface could mean market domination. Viewers will want to be able to easily watch content on their connected TV- without having to phone customer support or read a complicated manual.
TV providers need to offer effortless content delivery, making sure that the experience mirrors the ease of the standard TV experience.
Emma blogs for TV Genius over at the TV Trends Blog. TV Genius is a software company that has specialised in TV content discovery, recommendations, search, and interactive TV guides since 2005.
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1 Comments
Nice summary of a couple of the important things to remember when creating a 10 foot experience – the facts that it needs to be simple for viewers to find what they want in the minimum amount of fuss, and cheap and easy for content owners/retailers to maintain.
However, you are missing a vital point in your story above. I dont believe content owners / retailers need to put alot of time and money into designing and building their own Connected TV apps, as they wont need an app per se.
They will need to consider recommendation engines (naturally! 
, portability, DRM (if pay tv provider) and good catalogues, all underpinned by a good business model.
Beyond that then the 10 foot media and entertainment consumption behaviour will be changing radically, which is the thing that will drive less need for a branded TV app, but will still satisfy even your hardest nosed couch potato.
Posted by @mediadventurer on March 28, 2011
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