Television and Information Design
Usability professionals earning their bread and butter from the IT world. Often commune to speak about universality of usability. And why it is of such a concern to the world today.
Well this blog points in a similar direction. All this began with an incident. I watching news on television and my friend freaks out. “shuttle has crashed – 10 people dead”. I couldn’t believe my ears, the last time shuttle tried landing a few astronauts had left the domain as well. It took me a little time to understand that it was a mis-interpretation.
No shuttle had crashed. The landing had been stalled for weather conditions. The culprit was the news scroller appearing on the news channel. The top one spoke of some current feature while the one right below it had news flashes. At the time when my friend saw the news he interpreted them together. Shuttle couldn’t land and ten dead in bihar.
Most probably he dint read well. But I saw a glaring defect in that screen. The two bars were so colored that they almost looked like more information tabs. And unless the news was very different anyone could mistake them to be part of the same thing.
Looking further than just news information in form of the way text appears on television in different programs, some calling attention to ads, and some others to essential information on the screen. The cricket match, or program aids displaying ‘whats coming next’.
How much of real attention is paid to these. Most users complain of ads while cricket happens. Some even complain about the irritation messages cause. Can we not have a happier user and a popular channel.
I guess for news channels and sports, a happier customer should be welcome. That what the advertisers pay for. So here you are brethren charge into the mighty media industry.
Well this blog points in a similar direction. All this began with an incident. I watching news on television and my friend freaks out. “shuttle has crashed – 10 people dead”. I couldn’t believe my ears, the last time shuttle tried landing a few astronauts had left the domain as well. It took me a little time to understand that it was a mis-interpretation.
No shuttle had crashed. The landing had been stalled for weather conditions. The culprit was the news scroller appearing on the news channel. The top one spoke of some current feature while the one right below it had news flashes. At the time when my friend saw the news he interpreted them together. Shuttle couldn’t land and ten dead in bihar.
Most probably he dint read well. But I saw a glaring defect in that screen. The two bars were so colored that they almost looked like more information tabs. And unless the news was very different anyone could mistake them to be part of the same thing.
Looking further than just news information in form of the way text appears on television in different programs, some calling attention to ads, and some others to essential information on the screen. The cricket match, or program aids displaying ‘whats coming next’.
How much of real attention is paid to these. Most users complain of ads while cricket happens. Some even complain about the irritation messages cause. Can we not have a happier user and a popular channel.
I guess for news channels and sports, a happier customer should be welcome. That what the advertisers pay for. So here you are brethren charge into the mighty media industry.
posted by Rohan D'souza at
1:23 AM
2 Comments:
Yes, I too have noticed the problem with information overload on TV these days. Just like most of the new consumer offerings today (credit-cards and "online anything" to name some), they are trying to offer everything without proper planning and infrastructure. But guess things will get worse before they get better!
By
Anonymous, at 10:39 PM
hmm.. maybe in future TVs should come with infomation blockers like browsers have popup blockers that's probably the only way the user will have any control over how much info he wants to process.
blog's goin a nice way.. keep relating everyday things to usability.
By
sou, at 12:26 AM
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