Reflections from TVX 2015

The second ACM TVX 2015 conference was held in Brussel, it is a young but premier venue for discussion and presentation of research and industry practice on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video. This year is the second year since the conference changed its name from EuroITV to TVX. The main discussions in TVX 2015 centre on the influence of the great emergence of new digital devices such as smart phones, tablets and wearable devices on interactive experience of TV. Jacob Shwirtz gave an opening keynote, “empowering storyteller with social media” which implies more and more people may involve in the creation and  broadcast of TV content via social media. Therefore how to enhance the social experience and awareness while watching TV become significant in the era of social TV. Besides I also attended the workshop “People, Context, and Devices: Defining the New Landscape of TV Experiences” discussing some new landscapes of creating and consuming TV programs in terms of people, context and devices. Some people think TV industry should focus more on content other than intelligence of TV devices, because adding more smart functions to TV may break the simplicity and ease of use which are always crucial to user experience of watching TV.

Brainstorming in the workshop

Since now I am doing a project about utilizing social web media to create personalised advertisements, especially I paid close attention to the presentations, posters and demos discussing personalized TV content and the applications of second screen. So the following part will show some highlights in TVX 2015.

Opening session in TVX 2015

On Demand Service

Many attendees think on demand service and personalized service will be a good opportunity for TV industry in the near future. The broadcast of TV program cannot meet customers’ requirements, viewers expect producers to make more programs according to their needs. e.g. people can request what and when they can watch in the evening. This concept is also useful to my interest, the content and time of showing advertisements on TV can also be based on people’s demand. Joroen Vanattenhoven et al. argued the broadcast still have its use in some viewing situations which means on demand service does not always outperform broadcast TV. Therefore the choice between broadcast and on demand depends on the context of watching TV, sometimes maybe it is possible to have a hybrid way [1].

Usage of Second Screens

Second screens intend to augment the content shown on the first screen, e.g. when people are watching football match on TV, people can get more supplementary information like their interested football player’s bio. I saw many research works related to the second screen. In general the usage of second screens have been prevalent while watching TV, Christian Holz et al. from Yahoo lab investigate mobile device while watching TV on a minute by minute quantified level as well as the motivation and purpose of mobile device use. This study shows no prominent difference between amount of  mobile device use during programs and advertisements, which is interested to me because it seems advertisements will not affect the volume of mobile device use while watching TV.  But it shows the patterns of mobile device use with different genres of programs and mobile apps used during programs and advertisements [2].

Mobile apps use during watching TV [2]

Although massive use of second screens have significant anti-social connotations, Mark McGill et al. proposed to use screen mirroring to decrease the digital isolation of device usage and then people can view multiple devices activities on a TV [3]. Most second screen demos and posters show how do second screen applications support viewers to understand and explore the content on first screens, e.g. Discovering TV Contents in a 2nd Screen, Dengue Fever: Prevention through Information, A Game of Thrones Companion; Some demos are used to enhance the social interaction and user engagement by providing second screen applications such as GETVIVD: A TV platform for P2P Support Exchange, Learning Lessons for Second Screen from Board Games and so on. It is worth mentioning that most research works related to second screens are presented in the demo session or as work in progress. Personally I interpret this maybe the application of second screens is an emerging focus area for the TV market although the second screen is a concept more than new technology. However in my view the second screen is an opportunity to enhance TV experience, we should consider how to utilise it to meet our requirements e.g. now I am thinking can second screens be a good opportunity for advertisement industry especially advertisements on the first screen already lose viewers’ attention when they spent massive time on their mobile devices while watching TV.

Social Experience and Liveness Experience

Watching TV is regarded as a social activity, however sometimes the social experience and liveness experience are restricted by the time and space. Therefore many efforts trying to create new channels for social interaction between non-collocated viewers and sharing the moment to enhance liveness experience have been seen in TVX this year. Radu-Daniel Vatavu presented a great work, Audience Silhouettes, it shows audience silhouettes in real time as a minimal visual cue to enable non-collocated viewers to have interaction as well and his excellent work receive the best paper in TVX 2015 [4]. Raphael Velt et al. show his Phd work on an extended festival viewing experience to understand the relationship between diversity of forms of broadcasting and experience of “being there” [5]. From industry, VRT shows The Wall of Moments, a prototype application which combines user-generated content (UGC) with professional content to create an enhanced liveness experience for those who cannot attend the events.

Multi-Sensory Media Experience

I was really fascinated with the closing keynote given by Marianna Obrist, her research work shows the possibility to create more sensory interaction with media beyond traditional senses like visual and auditory sensation. I think having multi-sensory media experience does not only mean more fun while consuming media but also it is meaningful to the accessibility issue. Diana Affi et al. shows a smart emotional system for impaired people’s TV, e.g. the affective content in movies can be delivered to hearing /visual impairments by using environmental lights, emotional subtitle, vibration on mobile devices and so on [6]. I see the future of multi-sensory interaction, it enables interaction designers to have more options to enrich the interaction pattern and push the boundaries of sensations used in the interaction.

Farewell in TVX 2015

[1] Jeroen Vanattenhoven and David Geerts. 2015. Broadcast, Video-on-Demand, and Other Ways to Watch Television Content: A Household Perspective. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video (TVX ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 73-82.

[2] Christian Holz, Frank Bentley, Karen Church, and Mitesh Patel. 2015. “I’m just on my phone and they’re watching TV”: Quantifying mobile device use while watching television. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video (TVX ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 93-102.

[3] Mark McGill, John Williamson, and Stephen A. Brewster. 2015. Who’s the Fairest of Them All: Device Mirroring for the Connected Home. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video (TVX ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 83-92.

[4] Radu-Daniel Vatavu. 2015. Audience Silhouettes: Peripheral Awareness of Synchronous Audience Kinesics for Social Television. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video (TVX ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 13-22.

[5] Raphael Velt, Steve Benford, Stuart Reeves, Michael Evans, Maxine Glancy, and Phil Stenton. 2015. Towards an Extended Festival Viewing Experience. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video (TVX ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 53-62.