We have had the good fortune to do research and strategy on 12 national TV web sites over the last two years. It's a fascinating time for TV and the entire entertainment industry.
For years people have been foretelling the convergence of the internet and TV. (How many covers of Wired back in the late 90's were dedicated to it?) As it turns out, the internet/TV convergence is finally happening. Much is unexpected.
For one, it's astonishing where people are doing their web TV browsing and watching. People are watching shows on TV web sites on their smartphones on the bus on the way to work. They are browsing TV web sites while they watch "regular" TV. They're browsing and watching TV web sites on their new 40" Sony Google TV. Soon we'll all be watching TV sites on our internet-enabled microwaves.
I'm not disclosing anything proprietary here. These are things most people in the industry know. What's unexpected (for me at least) is how important usability and the other kinds of user experience work we do turn out to be to the convergence of the internet and TV.
Goodbye One Way Entertainment
Five years ago we had no entertainment clients. Being in New York, I had more than a few opportunities to talk to people in the industry. We pitched projects but had a hard time convincing people they needed usability. Good user experience just wasn't part of the vocabulary.
Put it down to an old-media mind set. Why care about usability? People watch TV. They don't interact with it. There just wasn't much pressure on TV web sites. They were ancillary to the primary means of delivery: broadcast and cable.
TV Discovers UX
About two years ago people started calling. What has changed is that TV web sites are now a primary means of content delivery. The delivery channels are now cable, broadcast, and internet. The internet channel isn't ancillary anymore. It's mainstream.
Why Usability
The pressure on TV web sites has quickly become quite immense. Sure the servers have to be beefed up (big time) but why spend on usability?
The reason entertainment cares about usability is because consuming internet TV is all about the experience of browsing. Yes people watch on the internet channel, but before they do, they have to find something. Providing a good user experience of browsing, searching and finding is a classic topic for usability.
Classic TV
But the case for usability goes beyond the classic problems of searching and browsing. Because the delivery channel is the internet, there are lots of opportunities to do more involved interactive things like social media sharing. If you're going to ask users to do anything they might not be expecting to do (and with TV they're mostly expecting to watch something) you need usability.
It's going to be interesting to see how it all cashes out. One thing we're pretty sure of is that the dominant media firms of the next decade will have usability as a key part of their strategy.