My boss asked me to write “a report” on CES 2010 design. I’d rather just design with my thoughts and observations, but apparently I need to communicate like a normal person every once in a while. So, here goes.

The TV UI in 2010 feels disjointed, haphazard…not quite there yet. There’s a handful of innovators, a whole slew of copy cats, and no real standard being used. The TV is a new medium, so emerging designs deserve a fresh look, but best practices in web design should not be forgotten.

Breadcrumbs aren’t just for birds

One example is Active Video. You click a menu item, and the menus swoosh out towards you, making you feel like you just traveled forward into the TV. This is an interesting and immediately engaging UI… but 3 or 4 clicks in, and I’m totally lost.

If the menus simply slid to the left, I would have more of an implied idea of where I was in the menu system. “The menu is just to the left now”, instead of “I am nested a level in, or are there levels behind me?”. I understand that animated nesting implies that I am “deeper” spatially, but I think it’s a harder concept for most users to get. It’s a little disorienting. To add to the disorientation, breadcrumbs were missing (if there were, they weren’t immediately noticeable anyway).

I think the TV is a more lenient medium for using animation to engage the user, but in this case, it should be the right type of animation that doesn’t compromise my understanding of where I am in the system. Eye candy is a wonderful thing. It helps engage the user. It can transform a UI from “usable” to “fun”, but it never trumps function. Let’s not repeat the same mistakes we made with early flash sites. Yikes.

Sidebars are so 10 years ago

One theme I noticed was vertical navigation – a left hand sidebar hosts the main navigation. This is probably because when scaling a video down to fit in a smaller window, you are left with more horizontal space than vertical. Makes sense, but modern web design leans the other way. Vertical navigation is considered out-dated, and based on eye tracking tests, less obvious and less readable. Hierarchy is absorbed more easily by a user in a top-down scenario. Ex: Browse tags is under Explore. Vertical navigation is still frequently used in web design, BUT not commonly as the main navigation of the site. The sidebar is still under the horizontal menu. More info on vertical navigation here.

I admit, I used vertical navigation in the Samsung Widget design. Looking back and thinking through why, I arrive at an implied main navigation. A previous design had each widget in a “dock” along the bottom of the screen, allowing the user to switch between widgets by clicking left and right on the remote– horizontal navigation. Moving forward with Nagra widgets, I’m not sure if I want to keep the dock design, or rethink the navigation. We’ve already run into problems with the widgets feeling too compartmentalized – cut off from each other.

On that note, another theme worth mentioning was the smart phone style widget navigation. Icons aligned in a grid brought you to each branded and unique UI. I am not opposed to this type of navigation, but it should be thought through more thoroughly. The reason this UI is popular is because of smart phones. This UI probably came about because of limited screen real estate. While it is a comfortable medium for the type of audience buying next gen TV’s, I think we can do better.

I think there is a merging of web and phone styles that will start to take shape on new TV products. There’s UI ideas that apply to the TV from both of these, but in the end, it’s a new medium, and warrants a fresh look at design.

Black is the new black

I step into the theatre. The movie has already started and I look for an empty seat in the dark. The screen reflects vibrant blues, light greens and pinks across the faces in the audience. The bright colors create sharp shadows across their cheekbones. The floor is visible only as a row of pin point lights guiding me to my seat. They let off a smoky glow.

Well, my descriptive writing skills are rusty, but these are the images that come to mind when I think of designing for TV. Merge images like this with the tactile, rubber and metallic feel of handheld UI and I believe you have a good representation of where TV design is headed.

High contrast black, with subtle smoky glows, bright saturated colors used sparingly, and textures you want to touch.

The clicker is dead.

The TV remote died a long time ago. Can we retire it already… please?

How many buttons on your remote do you use? I know there’s 50 buttons on it, but how many do you actually use? A tenth of them right? If it was designed well, you’d use 1 or 2. Apple figured this out years ago.

OK, so less buttons on the remote. That’s a start. What else? Responsive remotes would be nice. But that’s the bare minimum.

Motion tracking remotes (like the wiimote) are an obvious move. The beginnings of gesture controlled UI was shown at CES. In a perfect world, I’d cut out the middleman and interact directly with my TV. The silly thing is that it’s not that hard. A bit of software (that’s been proven by hobby developers) and a cheap web cam. That’s all ya need! So let’s do this already.

3D ZOMG!

I suppose I have a duty to mention 3D. Apparently it’s the hotness that “everyone” is talking about.

3D was completely oversaturated at CES. Yeah, it’d be neat to watch a 3D movie in the comfort of my own home. I bet I’d do it twice before the novelty wore off, or I got enough headaches, or I lost the dorky glasses.

Maybe I’m just bitter that it’s 2010 and I’m not watching projected holograms in my living room yet. Aside, I could see having a 3D section in a content menu, but I certainly wouldn’t make a huge deal out of it.

Hey buddy, what’s on?

Social. Yeah yeah, we all know social is where it’s at. How to approach social is the question. It’s not just a buzzword or a feature you tack on. It is hardwired into human DNA. It should be at the very core of modern applications. I could write several pages on social alone, so I’ll highlight the most interesting concept I saw at CES.

Semantic Search. This should be a no brainer. Google can tell us just about anything about, well, just about anything. There was a demo at Nagravision that was really intriguing. The user pulls up a video of  “Apocalypse Now”.  Next to the video is a tag cloud associated with the movie. Everything from “Surfing” to “LSD”. The tags were being pulled from IMBD if I recall correctly.The user could click a tag, and find videos and information related to it. The best part was that they could keep clicking through the tags in a very fluid approach to browsing. The user could click “Surfing” which in turn would bring up “Beaches” which in turn could bring up “California”.

The UI needed some love, but the concept was wonderful. Niche, user generated tags were being used to help users to find content effortlessly. This type of search is more representative of how the human mind works. I don’t go to the store and think, “I want a dairy product - milk. Also I want a grain - cereal.” I think, “I want milk, which is related to cereal”.

IMBD is a great place to pull video data. Glue that together with more social data from Facebook and I think you’ve got a really interesting product.