Introduction

Television technology and experiences with television have advanced remarkably in the last ten years. As the owner of a wall-sized flat-screen LG television, it’s hard to remember a time before magic remotes and 3d glasses, app centers and hi-res experiences. Newer television models seem to be evolving beyond our grasp, but to our greater and greater excitement. At the same time, programming has become more varied, on demand, and more infinite. With all these things being true, the question should be asked: is our experience better? What could go wrong?

Of course, as we all know, bigger isn’t necessarily better, and complexity can have its costs. There may be some lessons to learn from those old television boxes, with their broken plastic buttons and wire antennas, and that low-quality cable line running right into the back. While every new model television is a little different (a problem in its own right), each has strengths and weaknesses in the categories mentioned below. Still, we may find a few ways new televisions could take a play out of those old television play books to create better experiences.

So, what did those old televisions do so well?

1. RESPOND TO USER ACTIONS

When you did something to an old television, you got a response immediately. Turning on an old fashioned television resulted with a channel after a second or two. Newer televisions take a moment to light up, before showing a splash screen, and then, depending on model, jumping to an app center.

Changing the channel and waiting for the channel to load is also slower. While flipping through channels used to be a fun exercise (if hard to grok where you might be heading), now users often result to menus of channel options first before exploring. This may be for findability and understandability of the menus, though it could also be because the cost of flipping between channels in load time is so great.

Some of this may be due to the high-resolution content being loaded, though newer televisions could do better to signal that content is getting ready. YouTube has a clever solution — providing lower definition content and gracefully enhancing it as more of the data stream loads.

2. CLEAR SIGNALS ON ERRORS

When a channel wasn’t working on an old television, you know what you were getting — static snow. There was something peaceful and yet infuriating to see the snow. A real moment of zen. Still, the signal was clear: you are not getting reception. You can fiddle with the antenna, adjust the cable, to try to remedy things.

Today, cryptic error messages have replaced that static screen. Error 301. Error 239. A black screen. A screen that cuts out intermittently as data is lost. Connections between multiple boxes and sometimes incompetent cable companies (I’m looking at you Comcast!) leave customers with more confusion around how to remedy the situation: should I restart the box? Fiddle with some wires? Is there something I can yell at or someone I can call?

Newer televisions would be wise to provide better and consistent feedback, with ways to remedy the situation. Cryptic error messages may keep down support volume but they do not make happy customers. And hey, perhaps providing some of that soothing white snow might help keep tempers down.

3. PHYSICAL AFFORDANCES

While physicality of remotes and buttons on old televisions may be dismissed as nostalgia or a mental model of older users, when watching television users may be in all sorts of situations: one hand on the phone, around a partner. In the dark. Your elderly watcher may have low-vision. For all these users, the ability to feel the volume up and down buttons in your hand, and remember their placement on a remote, made working the remote an effortless experience.

In the same vein, when the remote was lost, such buttons could be easily located on the television. The 1–1 relationship between remote buttons and buttons on the television meant that the fear of losing the remote was much lower: I can still accomplish my goal (though I’ll have to have a bit of exercise to do so). Nothing was more satisfying as a child then building 8-foot-long kinex stick to poke at the buttons on my remoteless television.

New model televisions have replaced simple remotes with 100-button remotes, magic wands that direct an arrow across the screen, or mini-monitor remotes with hierarchy and touch-screens. Each of these remotes has issues with making frequent actions quick and readily available. In the instance of touch-screen remotes, you have additional glowing objects distracting from the main television screen. Users cannot identify buttons by feel, and actions may change dependent on context.

What newer model television makers miss is that users, though fascinated by these options and controls, and perhaps sold by these features, may lose brand loyalty when the experience sours. If newer televisions can provide clear physical affordances for the primary important controls (power, mute, volume, channel) while gracefully disclosing more advanced controls, all would benefit.

4. LIMITATION OF CHOICE

With the advent of multiple streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video, varied and infinite content is always at the hands of users. “Smart” networked televisions bring this content a click away from application tiles. Digital cable has brought additional options, thousands of channels, duplicates in regular or HD resolution, and ondemand ordering for the newest movies.

DVR technology compounds choices by giving users the ability to record anything to watch later. Entire seasons can now be consumed and fast-forwarded through if found boring. While this optimizes time in some cases, does it hurt user’s patience and ability to focus? While choice is often touted as a feature, the smart designer knows that too many choices can overwhelm. Users are afraid the current viewing item of choice is not right — what else is on, they may wonder? Am I committing time against something inferior to something else.

The limited number of channels on old cable televisions allowed for more focused viewing. The quest to find something “on” was a limited question with a finite, consumable number of answers. While users were forced to endure commercials, these commercials also led to funding the programming they were consuming — a 1:1 relationship understandable and predictably obtrusive. For some users, the quest to find one or two good programs had an element of surprise and reward: lost in the infinite options of today’s programming.

Newer model televisions could do well to optimize intelligently the things that users may want to see from the myriad options available. User-generated or smart limits on options shown at any one time help users focus in on a single show or movie, and prevent some of the overwhelming feelings users experience when given many options. Netflix’ grouping of television shows starts on this path, though more could be done to weed out inferior content and tailor to user’s preferences.

5. NO UPDATES

Many users have been conditioned that updates carry a good connotation — faster, newer, with improved features. And often updates can be productive — updating obsolete code or carrying a useful new feature. Frequently, however, due to bad testing or a rush to try out a money-making feature, updates can cause issues. With the last LG television software update, my Netflix login would be forgotten everytime I turned off the television. Compounding problems, these small issues may not be addressed immediately by the company unless there’s value to rushing the next update out or enough users are impacted. Users are left in the proverbial lurch.

Interestingly, one of the biggest impacts to users is the signal when considering to buy a television. Reviews on sites such as Amazon are mixed and highly variable as users love the initial or later versions, while others are stuck with a buggy update. The signal and noise are hard to parse.

Older televisions got something right with this — what you bought is what you got. Reviews of these old televisions were understandable and static (if verbal or written), and things did not “improve” over time. As is obvious, there was no need to wait for updates to download before continuing watching television.

New television makers might consider the value of an update, and respond faster to user problems. Non-blocking updates would also allow users to continue to enjoy the experience without having to be bothered by what is happening under the hood.

CONCLUSION

While more programming options and larger, higher definition televisions can be viewed as producing better experiences overall, we should not forget to look to the past to see where their predecessors got things right. Making faster, simpler, more reliable experiences might be the next step for television makers looking to cut a slice of the market — forgoing a 4-d or 8000k resolution in favor of the experience of television — watching, uninterrupted, with a bowl of popcorn and an eye for excitement.