An Approach Based on Multiple Text Input Modes for Interactive Digital TV Applications

摘要

The development of interactive digital TV applications is hindered by the user-interaction options allowed when traditional remote controls are used. In this work, we describe the model of a software component that allows text entry in interactive TV applications based on an interface with multiple input modes - the component offers a virtual keyboard mode, a cell keypad mode, and a speech mode. We discuss our considerations with respect to the design, development and evaluation of a prototype corresponding to our model, built according to the user-centered design methodology. After conducting a research on existing text input methods in television systems, we interviewed four experts in the interactive TV domain. We also applied 153 questionnaires to TV users, with the aim of gathering a user profile of users who make use of text entry mechanisms. During the development of the prototype, we conducted usability tests using the think aloud protocol and usability inspections using the heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthrough techniques. The evaluations allowed the detection of both, a number of problems and of several improvement opportunities; at the same time that they highlighted the importance of using complementary text input modes in order to satisfy the needs of different users. Overall, the evaluation results suggest that the proposed approach provides a satisfactory level of usability by overcoming the limitations of text input in the context of user-interaction with interactive TV applications.