Guidelines for Designing Easy-to-Use Interactive Television Services: Experiences from the ArviD Programme

Abstract

Ease of use is a key factor driving the adoption of interactive services in digital television (DTV). To facilitate the development of easy-to-use services and to distribute information among the industry players and the academia, the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications and the National Technology Agency of Finland commissioned a usability study on 11 DTV services. This paper presents the most topical results of these usability studies. First, we discuss the practical experiences of evaluating differing interactive television (iTV) services. Second, we present 39 guidelines for ensuring the ease of use of interactive services. These guidelines apply to services that are transmitted in the traditional broadcast system, but they also provide a good basis for designing services in Internet protocol television (IPTV).