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Research Report
User Exerience of DVDs
User Experience, Usability Issues, und Design Standards in der Gestaltung von DVD Menüs.
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Implications for Designing the User Experience of DVD Menus
Thomas Költringer, Martin Tomitsch, Karin Kappel, Daniel Kalbeck, Thomas Grechenig
DVD menus often miss out on usability and are complex
and difficult to navigate through. One of the main problems
is the lack of design standards. By conducting an expert
walkthrough we identified typical usability issues of DVD
menus and verified them with usability testing and a user
survey. Our research goal is to develop a set of specific
solutions for designing usable DVD menus to improve the
overall user experience. As a first step towards this goal we
present an initial set of usability issues that are specifically
relevant for DVD menu design.
INTRODUCTION
Motion pictures have initially been developed for home
entertainment at the Edison Company. Yet they first
appeared in movie theaters, where watching a movie was a
non-interactive, passive experience. When TVs and later on
VCRs found their way into our homes this experience
suddenly involved interaction. Back then, the devices
offered only a very small set of operations and the media
(e.g. VHS) was still linear. With the advent of DVDs the
user is now faced with a media that allows random access
and supports built-in interactivity.
Today, the primary display for watching movie DVDs still
is the home TV set with a remote control as input device.
Recent studies [1] show that more than 99% of U.S.
households have a TV set and 68% have DVD equipment.
Only 5% watch DVDs merely on their computers.
Usually, DVDs come with interactive menus for user
control. Due to the fact that these menus do not follow any
standards users often experience problems using DVDs.
This is especially relevant for novice users. This can make watching a DVD a frustrating experience. As Donald
Norman stated, it seems that designers of DVD menus have
not learned from previous media and are repeating the
mistakes of interactive media design [5]. A common
problem with DVD menus is their complex and difficult
navigation when using a remote control. Designers often
put much more emphasis on visual design than on
functional design. This leads to fancy, animated and
complex menus, however, for good usability simple control
and consistency are much more important.
The usability of DVD menus has barely been mentioned in
literature so far. Don Norman states a few problems and the
lack of standardization in his article about DVD menu
design [5]. Non-scientific publications, such as news
articles, weblogs and forum postings also identify DVD
specific usability problems. Research work about
interactive TV represents another domain from which
general issues (e.g. remote control interaction, visual
representation) for DVD menu design can be derived.
Besides that, there is a lot of standard literature about user
interface design which also applies to DVD menus.
IDEA
User expectations are key in DVD menu design in order to
make watching DVD a good user experience. One
possibility to assure this is to provide design principles or
guidelines [6]. These guidelines should be derived from
user studies and should cover all relevant issues, from
general user interface guidelines to specific DVD features.
Guidelines also represent a compelling tool for product
development in the face of limited resources. Experts can
discover usability problems very quickly using guideline
evaluation [3]. For DVD menu design, no specific design
guidelines have been developed yet. Every DVD production
company seems to have its own standards and guidelines,
which leads to various different implementations of DVD
menus on the market. This forces users to relearn the menu
handling over and over again.
Our study focuses on specific usability issues of DVD
menus. The goal of this study is to reveal the problems of
current DVD menus and to find solutions that enhance their
usability. Our aim is to create an initial set of design
principles for designing usable DVD menus.
METHOD
The focus of our evaluation was on investigating movie
DVDs, the most common kind of DVDs on the market. We
conducted the evaluation in two steps. In the first step
(expert walkthrough), usability experts evaluated several
DVDs to identify usability problems and design standards.
In the second step we conducted usability testing and a user
survey to verify the identified issues and to provide
recommendations for improvements.
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