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Group Members

  • Alejandro Dos Reis
  • Jason Strauss
  • Meelap Shah

Problem Statement

Many devices require text input even when a standard typing device (like a qwerty keyboard) is not available to the user.

  Examples:

  • AppleTV, NetFlix with a TV remote as the interaction device
  • Game consoles like XBox with a game controller as the interaction device

These devices usually present a rectangular grid of letters arranged alphabetically that the user must navigate using arrow keys (like the channel/volume controls on a tv remote) or a joystick (like on a game controller). From our own empirical evidence, typing in this way is unacceptably slow. There are several reasons why this might be:

  1. The characters are arranged alphabetically in a rectangle - this greatly differs from qwerty keyboards which are by far the most common device used for typing - so the user needs to learn where letters are in these rectangles and cannot take advantage of his familiarity with qwerty keyboards. Moreover, the dimensions of these rectangles varies across devices which exacerbates the learning problem.
  2. The feedback time on these devices is perceptibly longer than the familiar qwerty keyboard. The user needs to learn how long to wait after pressing an arrow button or moving the joystick before he can expect to see his selection on the screen change.
  3. Navigating all 26 letters by only having one point of selection and only being able to move up/down/left/right one unit at a time unsurprisingly feels slow when we are used to 8 points of selection (8 fingers).

We would like to design a new on-screen interface for typing that allows users to type quickly when all they have is a TV remote control or game controller.

GR1 Analysis

User Analysis

Services like AppleTV and Netflix augment the TV viewing experience. Consequently, these services aim to be usable for as large a fraction of TV viewers as possible. We believe that users of game consoles are generally a subset of TV viewers, so we do not identify a separate user group for this application.

Netflix/AppleTV/Game console users span every age group and nearly all backgrounds. We believe the following are true about our target users:

  • They can use a TV remote/game controller
  • They can read an on screen English keyboard like the ones used by Netflix and Xbox.
  • They typically use these services sitting in their own home.
  • They are already familiar with how to operate the TV and any other relevant device (like the Xbox).
  • They currently use or at least know that there is a search feature.

Task Analysis

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