4 ms·

Bringing The Ten Foot User Interface To The Web

22 points by jasonlbaptiste 16y ago

synnik 16y ago
Kinda missing the point, IMO - the UI differences are nowhere near as important as the cultural difference. 1 foot = single active user. 10 feet = passive user, often multiple passive users. THAT difference is a much bigger concept to work on than the UI...
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  I FULLY agree that is a huge part of the ten foot experience. I believe the tv screen is a social screen enjoyed by multiple users at one time. I'm talking more about UI, which is how the interface is presented ie- a 3 foot ui on a 50 inch screen would look horrible whether it was one person or five people. So would it be correct to say what i'm talking about is UI and what youre talking about is UX -Two very important and inter-related, but different things?
nhnifong 16y ago
Television is already the perfect UI for passive users. I would simply avoid that whole market and culture and pretend it doesn't exist while we starve it of creativity. Eventually active consumers will outnumber passive ones (or active behavior outpace passive behavior, minor difference) Assuming your not designing for television watchers, then the simple matter of the distance from the screen does become an intense source of changes in UI design.
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  Perfect experience, which is different than UI. I'm focused more on UI in this post. The experience end is just as fascinating. A lot of people ripped on nowmov when they launched, but I think they could be one of YCs biggest successes. They're trying to bring that instant on and easily passive experience to web video. That's desperately needed.
pkaler 16y ago
Cart before the horse. You want to bring the web to the ten foot user experience NOT the other way around. The iPhone App model is successful because native applications make HTTP requests and custom render the results rather than just rendering HTML. You need native applications in the living room because you need performance. You are competing with the XBox 360 and Sony PS3. An HTML web browser will not cut it. Next up is input. Rendering HTML that works with mouse/keyboard, and multitouch, and remote/gamepad in the living room seems like it will have way too many compromises. Wordpress/WPTouch works because it focuses mainly on websites with content and not Apps in general. Start backwards. There is a person sitting on a couch ten feet away from a display. His/her significant other is on the couch, too. What is this person holding in their hands? How is this input device communicating with the display? How does this display send network requests to a server?
jkincaid 16y ago
At Google I/O they held a press conference immediately following the Google TV announcement where I asked about bringing the 10 foot experience to the web. One of the project's lead PMs answered (as did Adobe's CEO, to a limited extent). See the video in this post: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/24/google-tv-and-optimizing-the-web-for-the-10-foot-experience/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/24/google-tv-and-optimizing-th...
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  Great post Jason. I updated mine to add some commentary / include the video+your post. I'm sure Adobe will make tools for this, but I'm hoping something comes out way sooner.
  - pixelbath 16y ago
    It becomes increasingly difficult to follow the narrative when the underlying text changes before I've even responded to it.
pixelbath 16y ago
From a UI standpoint, you pretty much pick an aspect ratio, and go to it. Sure, it'd be nice if all UI elements were homogenous across all TV apps, but it's not going to happen because there's no inherent standardization in the "platform." What works for a 3-foot interface may also work for a 10-foot interface. On a phone screen, it's all about clickable areas accessible via fingertip. On a 50-inch screen using a Wiimote-like device, it's all about clickable areas accessible via pointer. With a directional remote, it's all about the UI element highlighting. Maybe someone is using a touchscreen remote, which then creates a hybrid 3-foot/10-foot UI. I'm not sure I understand what you're advocating, other than standardized user interactions. Does this framework apply to all websites, effectively bringing "the web to TV," or does this only apply to "apps?" (similar to iPhone/iPad apps) "If my tv tells me I've won two free iPod nanos, it will get thrown out the window." This is some serious pie-in-the-sky thinking. If you're designing these wonderful apps with this wonderful ad structure, who's going to run ads on a platform that lets users just toss the ads out easily?
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  Take a look at jqtouch. It gets everything setup for the touch based web. The layout size, touch interactions,etc. Do what jqtouch is doing for the mobile web, but for the tv. Hope this clarifies things. Pixel and aspect ratio is actually fairly doable. I'd say 16:9 is commonplace enough, along with 1080p resolution (1920x1080). Sure there are still 720p TVs, but I think if were building for the future it's a good bet to say 1080 is the way to go. Re:ads. It certainly is pie in the sky thinking, but it's worth aiming for. Though I don't enjoy commercials, I don't feel they are as horrendous as horrible web ads.
  - pixelbath 16y ago
    JQTouch looks nice, but none of the animation demos worked for me, and the back and forward browser navigation broke completely. Regarding the actual UI, is everything supposed to be full-width? Seems like an easy way to solve the aspect ratio problem, but introduces either: 1. scrolling like a mofo, or 2. lots and lots of small screens. Is this a problem that a style guide would be attempting to solve?
mikeryan 16y ago
Dear god I hate it when someone says you can "optimize" a site for TV or in this case "10footify", I've worked in the TV UI space for a long time and have developed several HTML based apps for TV. Its a completely different experience navigating with a remote as opposed to a mouse. Something as simple as a select list can be a complete bear to navigate via a cloverleaf remote. Heck even something as simple as scrolling a page with a remote is a complete nightmare. As long as we are navigating with a cloverleaf (w/o something like a wiimote pointer) then web pages are going to work _extremely_ poorly on the TV. On that front I have yet to find wiimote or something like an iphone mouse that performs well on a TV. As much as a pointing device "works" on the Wii, you lose a whole magnitude of pointing precision with it and I've never seen anything else that's much better. This is completely outside of the whole content model for TV apps is such as a passive one. Reading some web content on TV is nice, but we will not be ingesting normal web content via our TV on a regular basis, we'll do what we do now with the TV on and everyone around it working on their own laptop, iPad or Smart phone.

Kinda missing the point, IMO - the UI differences are nowhere near as important as the cultural difference. 1 foot = single active user. 10 feet = passive user, often multiple passive users. THAT difference is a much bigger concept to work on than the UI...

jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
I FULLY agree that is a huge part of the ten foot experience. I believe the tv screen is a social screen enjoyed by multiple users at one time. I'm talking more about UI, which is how the interface is presented ie- a 3 foot ui on a 50 inch screen would look horrible whether it was one person or five people. So would it be correct to say what i'm talking about is UI and what youre talking about is UX -Two very important and inter-related, but different things?

nhnifong 16y ago

Television is already the perfect UI for passive users. I would simply avoid that whole market and culture and pretend it doesn't exist while we starve it of creativity. Eventually active consumers will outnumber passive ones (or active behavior outpace passive behavior, minor difference) Assuming your not designing for television watchers, then the simple matter of the distance from the screen does become an intense source of changes in UI design.

jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
Perfect experience, which is different than UI. I'm focused more on UI in this post. The experience end is just as fascinating. A lot of people ripped on nowmov when they launched, but I think they could be one of YCs biggest successes. They're trying to bring that instant on and easily passive experience to web video. That's desperately needed.

pkaler 16y ago

Cart before the horse. You want to bring the web to the ten foot user experience NOT the other way around. The iPhone App model is successful because native applications make HTTP requests and custom render the results rather than just rendering HTML. You need native applications in the living room because you need performance. You are competing with the XBox 360 and Sony PS3. An HTML web browser will not cut it. Next up is input. Rendering HTML that works with mouse/keyboard, and multitouch, and remote/gamepad in the living room seems like it will have way too many compromises. Wordpress/WPTouch works because it focuses mainly on websites with content and not Apps in general. Start backwards. There is a person sitting on a couch ten feet away from a display. His/her significant other is on the couch, too. What is this person holding in their hands? How is this input device communicating with the display? How does this display send network requests to a server?

jkincaid 16y ago

At Google I/O they held a press conference immediately following the Google TV announcement where I asked about bringing the 10 foot experience to the web. One of the project's lead PMs answered (as did Adobe's CEO, to a limited extent). See the video in this post: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/24/google-tv-and-optimizing-the-web-for-the-10-foot-experience/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/24/google-tv-and-optimizing-th...

jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
Great post Jason. I updated mine to add some commentary / include the video+your post. I'm sure Adobe will make tools for this, but I'm hoping something comes out way sooner.
- pixelbath 16y ago
  It becomes increasingly difficult to follow the narrative when the underlying text changes before I've even responded to it.

pixelbath 16y ago

From a UI standpoint, you pretty much pick an aspect ratio, and go to it. Sure, it'd be nice if all UI elements were homogenous across all TV apps, but it's not going to happen because there's no inherent standardization in the "platform." What works for a 3-foot interface may also work for a 10-foot interface. On a phone screen, it's all about clickable areas accessible via fingertip. On a 50-inch screen using a Wiimote-like device, it's all about clickable areas accessible via pointer. With a directional remote, it's all about the UI element highlighting. Maybe someone is using a touchscreen remote, which then creates a hybrid 3-foot/10-foot UI. I'm not sure I understand what you're advocating, other than standardized user interactions. Does this framework apply to all websites, effectively bringing "the web to TV," or does this only apply to "apps?" (similar to iPhone/iPad apps) "If my tv tells me I've won two free iPod nanos, it will get thrown out the window." This is some serious pie-in-the-sky thinking. If you're designing these wonderful apps with this wonderful ad structure, who's going to run ads on a platform that lets users just toss the ads out easily?

jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
Take a look at jqtouch. It gets everything setup for the touch based web. The layout size, touch interactions,etc. Do what jqtouch is doing for the mobile web, but for the tv. Hope this clarifies things. Pixel and aspect ratio is actually fairly doable. I'd say 16:9 is commonplace enough, along with 1080p resolution (1920x1080). Sure there are still 720p TVs, but I think if were building for the future it's a good bet to say 1080 is the way to go. Re:ads. It certainly is pie in the sky thinking, but it's worth aiming for. Though I don't enjoy commercials, I don't feel they are as horrendous as horrible web ads.
- pixelbath 16y ago
  JQTouch looks nice, but none of the animation demos worked for me, and the back and forward browser navigation broke completely. Regarding the actual UI, is everything supposed to be full-width? Seems like an easy way to solve the aspect ratio problem, but introduces either: 1. scrolling like a mofo, or 2. lots and lots of small screens. Is this a problem that a style guide would be attempting to solve?

mikeryan 16y ago

Dear god I hate it when someone says you can "optimize" a site for TV or in this case "10footify", I've worked in the TV UI space for a long time and have developed several HTML based apps for TV. Its a completely different experience navigating with a remote as opposed to a mouse. Something as simple as a select list can be a complete bear to navigate via a cloverleaf remote. Heck even something as simple as scrolling a page with a remote is a complete nightmare. As long as we are navigating with a cloverleaf (w/o something like a wiimote pointer) then web pages are going to work _extremely_ poorly on the TV. On that front I have yet to find wiimote or something like an iphone mouse that performs well on a TV. As much as a pointing device "works" on the Wii, you lose a whole magnitude of pointing precision with it and I've never seen anything else that's much better. This is completely outside of the whole content model for TV apps is such as a passive one. Reading some web content on TV is nice, but we will not be ingesting normal web content via our TV on a regular basis, we'll do what we do now with the TV on and everyone around it working on their own laptop, iPad or Smart phone.