Author:

Abstract:

Television has been a social medium since its introduction in households all over the world. Although television’s main aim is entertaining and informing its viewers, people often watch television together with close relatives or good friends, talk about what’s going on while watching te levision or even structure their social activities around a television s how. But television programs are also part of social interactions away f rom the television set, when discussing favourite television programs ar ound the water cooler at work or recommending shows to watch to good fri ends. As television becomes digital and interactive, new possibilities f or enhancing television programs and creating new services arise. Howeve r, current interactive television programs and services often ignore the social nature of traditional television and as a result are not adapted to the way people actually use and watch (interactive) television. Alth ough usability heuristics exist to make interactive television easier to use, there were no sociability heuristics which could ensure that inter active television programs and services support the social uses of telev ision, a gap this PhD intends to fill. In order to create sociability heuristics, five social interactive telev ision systems were tested in a lab environment with in total 149 users. The systems that were tested are AmigoTV, Windows Media Center, Social T V, Communication Systems on Interactive TV (CoSe) and Ambulant Annotator . The results of these user tests were analysed using a grounded theory approach, and were complemented with reports from other lab and field st udies of similar systems. This resulted in a list of twelve sociability heuristics that can guide the design as well as the evaluation of social television systems. The list of sociability heuristics presented in this PhD includes import ant aspects to take into account then designing social interactive television systems, such as offering different options for communicatin g, guaranteeing personal as well as group privacy, or adapting the progr ams and services to specific television genres. Although the heuristics are aimed at social interactive television in particular, they can also be used to make traditional interactive television services such as Elec tronic Programme Guides (EPG) more social. Therefore, these sociability heuristics can lead to interactive television programs and services that support to the social uses of (interactive) television