The Google TV User Interface →
As much as a product can be successful just because it has a great and easy-to-use user interface (the iPod way), it could also fail simply due to little engaging and boring user experience (the Apple TV way?). That was my first thought after watching the video above.
I'm not sure if it's the best way to design TV interaction mainly around a search box. For sure, that's what Google is all about. But also, no matter how simple and reduced the Google search website might be, you need to have an idea of what you want. The whole web is just waiting for you behind a tiny slot – but you have to feed it first. You have to take the initiative. That's also something we (Johannes and I) talked about quite often: we like Spotify, the cloud-based music service, its search works great and there's almost everything available. But as soon as you don't exactly know what you'd like to listen to, you're pretty lost.
When I'm watching TV, I'm mostly in lean back mode. Everything demanding for sophisticated interaction (if any) happens on another screen – communicating with friends during live events or gathering some information about what's currently running. On the TV screen, I want to focus on just one thing at the time. This could also be some simple interactive content or a game, but I mainly want to be quite passive and entertained – I want to be guided, I want to discover, I want serendipity and I want my TV to learn from my watching habits and behaviour so it can continuously improve. I think Boxee has some promising approaches – it pulls in video content from your social network friends and let's you send videos (via browser bookmarklet) you're stumbling upon during the day –while you might have no time to watch– to a queue, waiting to be watched on your TV, in your living room. I also referred to some ideas around aggregation-based TV curation in a previous posting.
My knowledge of the US television environment is too limited, but as much as I understand from that video, Google TV is going to be positioned in addition to cable providers, as an extension of what people are already using. Adapted to my personal TV experience, that's actually not what I need. I don't want another box and cables in my living room (some TV sets have it pre-installed), I don't want another, additional user interface. My problem with television isn't the way I interact with it, it's the content that's being provided. I'd gladly like to replace, not just complement it. I'd like to have a single, elegant entry point to my TV experience that let's me search, but also just channel-surf (or similar random-based scattering techniques). Where I can watch the news, live sports coverage, video clips as well as feature films and documentaries.
For sure, Google TV is more a platform (based on the open Android operating system) than a product and third party developers are going to create inspiring and helpful applications. But as an out of the box solution and as far as I can judge from watching an introduction video, I'm not convinced. I'm looking forward to checking out the real thing, will give it some time to evolve and then recapitulate on the topic.
