Designing for entertainment
This blog post is based on a presentation at the BCS HCI conference in London, September 2006
As home media devices are becoming more common, we are interacting with more and more systems. A lot of people are using a web browser, ticket system, game systems and DVD video menu every day.
Some of the elements from these systems are the same (back, forward, stop, play, print…) but the systems have slight differences.
We have collected design experiences from the web for decades, but still, the designers of DVD menues are in most cases disregarding basic guidelines for good design when desiging. When we finally “got rid of” splash/intro-screens from the web, it came back in the DVD menues. What about link style and consistency? In some DVD menues, it’s basicly impossible to see what menu element is selected. In the film “Memento”, the letters of the active menu item does actually disappear when selecting it (symbolising the memory loss of the main character).
Should we accept that fancy design have higher priority than usability in entertainment, or should the design community develop guidelines based on experiences from more established systems, like the web? And would industry use the guidelines – considering that DVDs is something you buy before using it, while low usability on a web page can result in the person leaving the page without buying?
Personally, I would prefer to switch off the graphical DVD menus and use text-only menus. Nothing is more frustrating than spending 5 minutes just to get the thing started.
Students at INSO in Vienna have developed a set of 44 guidelines for DVDs, and tested the guidelines on a user group.
I hope their work will be extended and embraced by designers and industry so that I won’t smash more remotes in the future.
Af:
Anders ?
Kategorier: Usability
