Posts written by Abid Warsi

2nd leaders’ debate - rating the leaders’ performances

By Abid Warsi on 23 April 2010

Tags:

Last week I watched the election on my laptop to experience Social TV. The most interesting aspect was seeing how viewers’ ratings of the leaders changed throughout the debate. This week, I looked at the different ways in which websites or TV channels displayed viewers’ ratings to see which worked best.

Guardian’s Reaction tracker

The Guardian had a clear chart with a line for each of the leaders. However, it only updated once every minute. This wasn’t frequent enough for it to enhance the live viewing experience. When Gordon Brown told Nick Clegg to ‘Get real’ I wanted to know straight away what the viewers thought about it. But, by the time the chart updated the debate had moved on.

Sky TV’s bar chart

Sky TV’s bar chart tried to show the breadth of opinions. For example, they didn’t just show the average rating for Nick Clegg. Instead Sky showed how far the ratings from most people ranged for Nick Clegg. So, the more the ratings differed the taller the yellow bar would be. This added a different dimension to how the ratings were displayed. However, it was a little more complicated and harder to interpret than the Guardian’s simple line chart. Also, the bar didn’t seem to move that much and you had to look carefully to notice any movement.  Most of the time I wanted to look at the leaders themselves so I often missed changes in the ratings.

ITV’s Worm

I wrote about this last week. It showed whether viewers felt positively or negatively towards what the leaders were saying. A single line went up or down in reaction to what the leaders were saying. There were 2 great things about this. Firstly, the line moved instantly in reaction to what was being said, giving immediate reactions. Secondly, the scale was set just right so that when viewers liked/disliked a leader’s comments the line rose/dropped markedly, these made the changes look and feel more dramatic. Out of the 3 displays ITV’s Worm was the best to watch.

Viewer ratings can really add to the experience of watching a debate. I can see these becoming more common in Social TV. It’s important to consider the best way to display the ratings. They should grab the viewer’s attention by making changes noticeable and easy to interpret.

This ends a politically themed week here at Webcredible. See how we rated the websites of the UK political parties in a report we launched earlier this week.

Comments:

Leave a comment on 2nd leaders’ debate - rating the leaders’ performances

Election leaders debate - a social TV experience

By Abid Warsi on 16 April 2010

Tags:

Many people in the UK had a social TV experience tonight, watching the leaders debate while also commenting on facebook, twitter and chat rooms. Social TV is slowly getting more popular, especially at big events like this. I had my first social TV experience tonight. I had my laptop open on ITV’s website where there was a live video of the debate, a chat room, a facebook window, a live ‘Worm’ graph and instant polls.

Chat room & facebookfacebook connect chat widget

There was a live ITV chat room where viewers were giving instant reactions. It was interesting to see what other viewers thought of what the leaders said and to see a big range of viewer opinions. It was also good to see that most viewers didn’t stick to part lines and but gave genuine comments, criticising their favourite leader and complimenting the opposition where appropriate.

The ITV website also had a facebook window which showed comments made by facebook users. This had the potential to be more interesting than the public chat room - I was more interested in knowing the opinions of my friends than those of strangers.

However, the facebook window showed comments from any facebook user on the ITV website and any comments from my friends were lost amongst these. I’d have preferred a more personal experience within a smaller social group.

Worm

ITV worm chartFor me, the most captivating example of social TV came from the ‘Worm’. ITV added a live graph line, called a ‘Worm’, on top of a live video of the debate. This continuously showed how much a select group of 20 viewers felt positively or negatively towards what the leaders were saying (they were provided a special device to do this).

The ‘Worm’ was the easiest element of social TV to follow. Firstly, I didn’t need to look away from the leaders to know what other viewers thought. Secondly, I could understand how other people felt much faster by looking at the ‘Worm’ line than by reading through comments.

The ‘Worm’ concept could be improved. 20 users is very small sample size and a much larger sample would give a more reliable representation of public feelings. For example, an interface could be built into the website to allow all viewers give their feelings.

Live poll

Finally, ITV took polls on its website throughout the debate and showed the results changing from minute to minute. It was exciting to get an early view of what the major opinion polls would eventually show after the debate. It was also an effective way to get viewers to contribute to the social TV element - it made it very quick and easy to share your opinion.

Overall experience

Taking part in social TV added a new and exciting dimension to the viewing experience. It’ll be interesting to see how social TV develops as an increasing number of people watch TV while also browsing the Internet on their laptops, netbooks, iPads, mobile phones… I’d recommend trying out the social TV experience at the next leaders debate or big sporting event.

Comments:

Leave a comment on Election leaders debate - a social TV experience

SeeSaw launches new online TV service

By Abid Warsi on 17 February 2010

Tags:

SeeSaw has just launched its TV service bringing together recent and archive TV programmes from the BBC, Channel 4 and Five. It bought its technology from Project Kangaroo, which was joint venture by the same broadcasters that the Competition Commission blocked. Now that this service has finally arrived will it succeed?

3 channels in 1 place

Bringing programmes from different broadcasters into a single place has been popular elsewhere. Hulu did this in the USA where it offers programmes from NBC, Fox and ABC, amongst others, and has been very successful. For users it’s convenient to have all the programmes they want to watch all in one place and it encourages them to browse around and find various programmes, just as they do on their living room TVs. However, UK broadcasters already have their own successful catch up servies so SeeSaw will need promote itself heavily and attract users to its website.

SeeSaw will contain thousands of hours of archive programmes and this may help it to attract users. However, it’s not clear from its homepage that it contains a large amount of archive footage. It should make its proposition clear in its marketing material and on its homepage.

Living room

Most users will still prefer to watch programmes on their living room TVs rather than on their PC monitors. Living rooms are used for socialising and large TVs work much better PCs in this environment. If SeeSaw found a way to integrate its service into TV sets, set-top boxes or gaming consoles then it could get head of the competition. Netflix has does this quite successfully with its own streaming service in the USA and SeeSaw could benefit from doing something similar.

Comments:

1 comment on SeeSaw launches new online TV service

Designing effective map-based browsing

By Abid Warsi on 7 January 2010

Tags:

Many websites from varying sectors have some kind of geographical-based navigation, whether it’s a travel website, an estate agents’ site or even the store locator function on a retail website. The question is how to offer this functionality. Some sites offer map-based browsing, but often it’s not used heavily as it’s not easy-to-use. I’ve come across a few sites like this recently and it reminded of some previous tips I wrote for our newsletter on how to design effective map-based browsing.

Start from a high level and allow customers to drill-down

It’s important with map-based browsing to start from a high-level map view (e.g. the whole world or the whole of the UK). Users should then be given large, labelled areas to click on, such as countries, then regions, then cities, etc. During this process you must make each area a single hotspot with a mouse over effect to make it appear clickable.

Add further detail for customers who want specific places

It’s very common for travel customers to already know the specific city or region that they want to visit, or even the specific resort. To best cater for these customers you must provide an alternative way to find a destination, such as a dropdown list of the most popular destinations. In addition, you should consider adding landmarks at the most detailed map level e.g. town names or major roads to allow users to pinpoint their destination.

Remember to offer a way back

Chances are that customers will want to look at a number of destinations within a particular region. It’s no good making users start a new search every time they want to look at another destination. Instead you should give them a way to zoom out to the previous page.

Comments:

Leave a comment on Designing effective map-based browsing

Mobile TV uptake

By Abid Warsi on 24 August 2009

Tags:

iPlayer on iPhoneA recent BBC News article discussed the slow uptake of mobile TV (Mobile TV ‘very slow’ to take off). We discussed mobile TV in our Screen Reality report where we discussed the convergence across the PC, TV and mobile phone.

As we predicted, live mobile TV has been slow to take off. Most people won’t plan their mobile TV watching according to broadcast TV schedules. The potential growth area we predicted for live TV seems to have been more successful. Watching live events such as sporting events or Michael Jackson’s memorial service is more common.

Mobile TV providers should consider the context in which consumers will use their services. With the exception of watching live events, consumers are more likely to watch content if they can start watching at a time that’s suitable to them, pause it and then pick up from where they left off at a later time.

If your interested in reading more about convergence have a read of our Screen Reality report.

Do you watch TV or video on your mobile phones? Tell us about your experiences.

Comments:

Leave a comment on Mobile TV uptake

 

View top searches