Two years ago, I summarized "Some Things About Apple Watch Interaction", and briefly shared the interaction design of the small screen of the watch. In the past year or so, I have been fortunate enough to participate in the large-screen project on the TV side. In the process of continuous experimentation, exploration and design, I have also gained some b2b data design experience on the TV side. things” to share and discuss the design of the TV side together.
Hardware + remote control - basic interaction
Based on desktop data research and design experience, it is concluded that the basic interaction mainly includes the following key contents: remote control input, navigation and menu, information display, control placement and focus state.
1. Remote control input
When we tap or swipe on the phone screen quickly and easily with our fingers, the operation of the mainstream TV screen and application is still: use the remote control to operate . The remote controls produced by different TV manufacturers on the market also have different shapes and number of buttons, as shown in Figure 1, respectively: remote controls for Apple, Google, Xiaomi, LeTV and ZTE set-top boxes.
Figure 1 Remote controls from different manufacturers
Despite the odd shape and number of buttons, almost all remote controls have several of the same buttons: up, down, left, right, back, and OK , as shown in Figure 2. They are also the basic interaction method for remote control input: move the focus position through the "up, down, left and right keys", select the interface element, press the "OK key" to perform related operations, and press the "return key" to return.
Figure 2 Basic buttons of the remote control
In the above picture, there are some buttons, such as number keys and menu keys, some remote controls do not have them. The "menu key" is emphasized here. For example, in a previous design, the infrequent operations are hidden in the menu key, and the operation is called out when the user presses the menu key (such as "long press" on Android, "left swipe" on iOS) Wait). Later, it was discovered that not all remote controls have this button, and it can only be iteratively optimized in subsequent versions. Therefore, before designing, you may wish to study your input hardware device to avoid unnecessary pits caused by "stereotypes".
The characteristics of the remote control input determine that the efficiency and convenience of the user's input are greatly reduced. Therefore, under such constraints, designers can only minimize this inconvenience through various methods:
1. Reduce user input: You can not let users input without input, try to only let users do "selective" input, and avoid a lot of "text-based" input. For example, in the search function on TV, timely association and hot search words are used. becomes extremely important, as shown on the right in Figure 3.
Figure 3 Optimization of keyboard input
2. Optimize the input mode: Combine the project situation, try to optimize the input mode, such as making full use of the remote control number keys for input, redesigning the keyboard to reduce user operations, as shown in Figure 3.