Silicon Alley Insider published my piece today on “over-the-top” video. It’s an exciting space and I’m really pleased with how this came out. Check it out:
I agree with Janko Roettgers’ (NewTeeVee) post, except for point number 4:
4. Google TV Needs to Embrace Cord Cutting
This is a biggie. Google TV is all about enhancing your pay TV experience, and as a result, the company has ignored cord cutters. Instead, it’s tried hard to play nice with broadcasters, only to see nearly all major networks block Google TV devices from accessing catchup episodes online.
Building on top of the pay TV experience rather than seeking to replace it is what makes Google TV interesting and what differentiates it from the pure OTT plays. Had Google not completely fumbled on execution (UX, content partnerships, pricing, marketing) this is what could have made Google TV a breakaway hit.
I would add to Janko’s list that Google TV needs broad CE partnerships. Google should focus on doing whatever they can to make Google TV the defacto smart TV operating system (as they’ve done with Android on mobile). Make it open source or license it at a cost so low that CE manufactures can’t resist abandoning their own embedded systems for Google TV.
Back in the pre-web days, desktop UI designers would follow established interface guidelines for the applications they created. That’s why each time you installed a new Windows or Mac application the menus would be in familiar places and UI elements were organized in ways you were accustomed to. This made it possible to quickly learn new software. Companies like Adobe and Microsoft went to great lengths (and still do) to establish interaction models and design continuity across their product lines precisely for this reason.
The web changed all this. For the first time user interfaces were being designed not by interaction experts but by graphic designers. These were people for whom usability was a foreign concept. Creativity was the primary goal. For the web projects I was involved in throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the lead designer in many cases had until recently been laying out print brochures and advertisements. While this had the long term benefit of introducing some UX innovations and aesthetic beauty to software design, it mostly made for poor web usability.
Tools like Adobe Flash only made things worse – much worse – and usability experts like Jakob Nielsen made whole careers out of criticizing the usability atrocities being committed daily on the web.
Eventually web usability improved, with new disciplines like “Information Architecture” focusing on user interaction, and filling the much needed gap between feature specifications and visual design. And of course most of today’s web builders were in grade school during the frontier days. Their entire educational and professional experience has been rooted in digital media and the web.
While web usability has improved dramatically over the years, web applications are still in many cases more difficult to use than desktop apps. Part of that is due to the open nature of the web and a lack of well defined (and followed) UX guidelines. Sure, there have been countless books and blogs written about web usability and there are established best practices, but the web is still seen as a creative frontier where every site and service feels the need to establish a revolutionary new interaction model.
Consider Google’s suite of web apps (Gmail, Docs, Analytics, Reader, etc.). Each product has a completely unique user interface and way of working, requiring a steep learning curve each time you venture into a new app. You would think that an engineering driven company with limitless resources would see the practical benefits in establishing a consistent visual language and interaction model across their products – but they don’t.
Love it or hate it, Apple’s regulated acceptance policy for App Store submissions has – in general (there are always exceptions) – resulted in software with better usability than that found on the web. This is due in large part to Apple’s iOS Human Interface Guidelines, which have become a kind of UX bible for iOS developers, helping designers and developers alike to think about usability in a broader context. For instance, instead of asking the question, “what’s a cool way that media should behave within my app?” they ask instead, “how can I follow the established behavior for media so that users of my app will intuitively understand how to use it?”
And contrary to what some have argued, adherence to Apple’s guidelines have by no means stifled innovation. Twenty minutes with an iOS app like Flipboard or Twitter for iPad and you realize that the most innovative and exciting software being developed today is for iOS. What’s more, these apps are setting a new standard of user experience and design excellence that’s rapidly making its way to other platforms like Android, connected TVs and, interestingly enough, even the web.
Consider for instance the aesthetic quality of The New York Times Chrome Web App (link works fine in Safari by the way):
It looks a lot like the New York Times iPad App, and like the iPad App, it’s simple, clean and easy to use. Which raises the bigger question, why isn’t nytimes.com more like their iPad app? Why the need for a special Chrome Web App, which is really just a redesigned website (it runs fine on Safari for instance). But that’s a bigger topic worthy of another post.
Engadget:
Reuters says MS has been meeting with media companies in an effort to create an entirely new TV service possibly delivered through the Xbox 360. Apparently there are multiple options on the table, ranging from a full-on “virtual cable operator” with monthly fees to using the 360 as an extension of existing cableco online TV initiatives to simply delivering certain channels like ESPN and HBO a la carte, and Reuters’ sources say the plan might take another 12 months to develop.
With a massive install base of over 40 million units the Xbox 360 could very well become the trojan horse of over-the-top video services.
Stupid computer questions used to drive me crazy. It baffled me that there were computer users who didn’t understand (and had no interest in learning) the basics of how they worked. I didn’t expect them to learn a programming language or even how to upgrade the memory, but come on, these were people who sat behind a computer most of the day and didn’t understand the difference between an application and a document.
What I didn’t understand at the time is that most people simply don’t care how computers work. It just doesn’t interest them. They’re not geeks. They want to do their work (or have their fun) and be done with it.
The PC industry was born of the hobbiest, do-it-yourself tinkerings of electrical engineers and programmers. These were machines built by engineers for engineers. And though they’ve become significantly less complex and easier to use in the last three decades, they still haven’t entirely shaken their propellerhead roots.
The personal computer is unique in this way. No other ubiquitous piece of modern technology requires its users to come equipped with such an advanced understanding of its inner workings. Modern automobiles, with their voice controlled navigation systems and computer assisted stabilization are equally if not more technologically advanced as the PC, but you don’t need to be a mechanic to drive a car.
One issue is this vague notion of “openness.” Open means different things to different people. There’s open source, open standards, data portability, etc. I’m not speaking to any one of these specifically (all have their merits), but to the generally held belief by many in the tech world that open systems by definition are inherently better for both developers and consumers alike. Ignoring for a moment that few can even agree on what constitutes open, I would argue that the tech industry’s obsession with openness, especially as it applies to personal computing, actually creates costly fragmentation for developers and unnecessary complexity for consumers.
More importantly though, the average consumer could care less about openness. This is a geeky issue that only geeks care about. Consumers want stuff that works. And the cold hard reality is that computer systems that are restricted by design are inherently simpler and easier to use than “open” and vastly user programmable systems.
There I said it. Closed it better (at least in this context).
Gaming consoles have proven this. They are extremely easy to use, require absolutely no training or tech support, and just work. And make no mistake, gaming consoles are powerful computers capable of running some of the most sophisticated software in existence. But by any definition they’re also closed systems. The software available on gaming consoles is tightly controlled by their manufacturers (much more so than the Apple iOS devices), as are peripheral devices like game controllers. And users can’t access the filesystem or tinker with the command line. But why should they? These are systems designed for running software, not writing it.
Shouldn’t PCs be more like gaming consoles? Even if you need to edit video or record and mix multitrack audio, you still shouldn’t need to bother with filesystems or troubleshoot device driver conflicts. But you do.
Apple gets this. Which is why their iOS devices have more in common with gaming consoles than personal computers. XBoxes, PS3s, iPhones and iPads are all essentially “app appliances” with different form factors. And my guess is that Apple TV (currently powered by an iOS variant) will eventually adopt this model as well with an app store of its own.
But iOS devices were an opportunity to create something entirely new from scratch. PCs on the other hand carry with them over 30 years of legacy baggage that can’t easily be cast aside. These devices will need to evolve quickly or face extinction as more and more consumers demand the simplicity and elegant usability of devices like the iPad and XBox 360. Apple, with among other things, the upcoming launch of their “Mac App Store” is doing what they can to accelerate the evolution of the Mac along these lines. And it’s not just Apple. Google’s upcoming Chrome OS is clearly an attempt to reinvent the PC (or its slowwitted cousin the netbook) as a web app appliance.
Here is my talk from the NewTeeVee Live conference. Some of the slides didn’t render correctly on their projector (probably a Mac to PC thing). Not a big deal. The conference itself was great. Good content and well organized.
And here are the slides on SlideShare:
What Will It Take To Make “Over-The-Top” Video Successful?
Here is an interview I did with Ryan Lawler at the event as well:
It’s all customizable, unfamiliar and mostly baffling, and you don’t get a single page of instructions. (I learned how to use Google TV by shooting a fusillade of questions to the Google P.R. people — an option I’m guessing won’t be open to you.)
Now’s the time to create engaging brand campaigns that resonate with consumers and break through the noise. Here are five of the best ways marketers are currently using online video.