Towards optimal navigation through video content on interactive TV

A wide variety of video content—news programs, documentaries, sports shows, movies, and the like—is broadcast today in digital format to interactive TVs. Unlike a conventional TV, an interactive TV allows the viewer to navigate back and forth in time through the available content. Surprisingly, few studies have addressed the problems that arise when navigation along the time dimension becomes possible. The aim of this study was to develop navigation aids for interactive TVs that are theoretically grounded and empirically verified. Toward this end, we first designed two new navigation aids based on episodic indexing theory (EIT): a recency-frame and a short-reminder. Second, we built an interactive TV simulator (ITS) to test the new navigation aids in a controlled experiment. Finally, we devised several measures appropriate for evaluating navigation aids for interactive TV in addition to traditional usability measures. Subsequently, employing the interactive TV simulator and the newly devised measures, we conducted an experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of the two proposed navigation aids. We found that both navigation aids enhanced the quality of the viewer's experience. The paper concludes with a discussion of the study's limitations and implications.