Presentation given at the public symposium on Digital TV held in Trento at Fondazione Bruno Kessler on the 30th of April 2010: “La migrazione alla TV Digitale Terrestre tra sfide e opportunità”.

1. Audience, users
and people
Luca Galli!
Trento, aprile 2010

2. Audience

3. Retrieved online with no permission! It will be removed if it violates copyright.

4. Family watching television c. 1958 National Archives and Records Administration retrieved on Wikipedia

5. VHS heaven or ... hell by Makekessnoise 2006 Creative Commons 2.0 retrieved on Flickr

8. YouTube, 3-screens, Facebook, widgets.
The last three years have been exciting!
for the TV consumer
[Montpetit 2009]
Marie-José Montpetit 2009,Your content, your network, your devices: Social Networks meet your TV experience

10. Wii sports pt 1 fight by Cowboy Ben Alman 2008 Creative Commons 2.0 retrieved on Flickr

11. TV watching has always been
a mix of “lean forward” and “lean back”
close viewer engagement with shows,
versus less active
(and possibly less positive)
“couch potato” watching
[Barkhuus and Brown 2009; Silverstone 1994]
Louise Barkhuus and Barry Brown 2009, Unpacking the Television: User Practices around a Changing Technology

12. Users

13. Human Computers 1949 NACA-NASA Public Domain retrieved on Wikipedia

14. +

15. First, designers must understand who the users will be
[Gould and Lewis 1985]
John D. Gould and Clayton Lewis 1985, Designing for Usability: Key Principles and what Designers Think

16. UX
User Experience
User Research
Interaction Design
Design Research
IxD
Usability
Human Factors
Computer Human Interaction

17. [...] within the technology design literature,!
television has been much neglected
[Barkhuus-Brown 2009]
Louise Barkhuus and Barry Brown 2009, Unpacking the Television: User Practices around a Changing Technology

18. Digital Birmingham retrieved on http://www.digitalbirmingham.co.uk/

19. Barkhuus and Brown 2009 Unpacking the Television: User Practices around a
Changing Technology!
Obrist et al. 2009 Connecting TV & PC: An In-Situ Field Evaluation of an
Unified Electronic Program Guide Concept!
Simons 2009 Me TV:Towards Changing TVViewing Practices?!
Tsekleves et al. 2009 Bringing the Television Experience to other Media in the
Home: An Ethnographic Study!
Tuomi 2009 A Brief History of iTV Entertainment
Williams et al. 2009 An Emergent Role for TV in Social Communication!
Wilfinger et al 2009 Evaluating and Investigating an iTV Interaction Concept in
the Field!
Hess 2009 Explore Social Behavior around Rich-Media: A Structured
Diary Study!
Janseen 2009 Interactive Television Format Development – Could Participatory
Design Bridge the Gap?

20. Lego People Photography Joe Shlabotnik 2006 Creative Commons 2.0 retrieved on Flickr

21. [User-centered Design]
it’s almost a religion in our design schools,
but it is in fact an incomplete philosophy
that lacks a sense of responsibility for concerns
other than those of the immediate end-user
[Schweikardt 2009]
Eric Schweikardt, User Centered is Off Center 2009

22. Within the HF [human factors] approach,!
the human is often reduced to being
another system component
[Bannon 1991]
Liam Bannon, From Human Factors to Human Actors 1991

23. The bad or problematic user is the one
that does not embrace the system or device.
This creates a moral problem,
a stain to be eradicated.
[Satchell-Dourish 2009]
Christine Satchell, Paul Dourish, Beyond the User: Use and Non-Use in HCI 2009

24. Everett M. Rogers 1995, Diffusion of Innovations

25. People

28. Audience as users (and viceversa)
User research
(not necessarily “user-centric”)
Attitude and sensitivity
(beside process and methods)

29. Grazie
lgalli@pobox.com!
http://www.lgalli.it

30. Crediti relativi a immagini e video non coperti da licenze Creative Commons o altre licenze di pubblico dominio, riprodotti in questa
presentazione per puro uso di critica e di discussione, secondo l’art. 70 della legge italiana sul diritto d’autore e la legislazione degli Stati
Uniti sul fair use.!
!
Slide 3 The Simpson copyright FOX!
Slide 6 TiVO logo copyright TiVO!
Slide 7 Ted torrent episode downloader http://www.ted.nu!
Slide 9 PONG presumibilmente copyright Atari fonte Wikipedia!
Slide 28 Talkshow with Spike Ferensten, produzione FOX, fonte http://www.break.com!
Slide 30 Mae Laborde 2007 http://www.growingbolder.com!
!
Legge 22 aprile 1941 n. 633!
Protezione del diritto d'autore e di altri diritti connessi al suo esercizio!
Art. 70!
1. Il riassunto, la citazione o la riproduzione di brani o di parti di opera e la loro comunicazione al pubblico sono liberi se effettuati per
uso di critica o di discussione, nei limiti giustificati da tali fini e purché non costituiscano concorrenza all'utilizzazione economica
dell'opera; se effettuati a fini di insegnamento o di ricerca scientifica l'utilizzo deve inoltre avvenire per finalità illustrative e per fini non
commerciali.!
1-bis. È consentita la libera pubblicazione attraverso la rete internet, a titolo gratuito, di immagini e musiche a bassa risoluzione o
degradate, per uso didattico o scientifico e solo nel caso in cui tale utilizzo non sia a scopo di lucro. Con decreto del Ministro per i beni
e le attività culturali, sentiti il Ministro della pubblica istruzione e il Ministro dell’università e della ricerca, previo parere delle
Commissioni parlamentari competenti, sono definiti i limiti all’uso didattico o scientifico di cui al presente comma.!
2. Nelle antologie ad uso scolastico la riproduzione non può superare la misura determinata dal regolamento, il quale fissa la modalità
per la determinazione dell'equo compenso.!
3. Il riassunto, la citazione o la riproduzione debbono essere sempre accompagnati dalla menzione del titolo dell'opera, dei nomi
dell'autore, dell'editore e, se si tratti di traduzione, del traduttore, qualora tali indicazioni figurino sull'opera riprodotta.!
!
Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107.!
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use
by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment,
news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

31. Audience, users
and people
Luca Galli!
Trento, aprile 2010
Presentation given at the public symposium on Digital TV held in Trento at Fondazione Bruno Kessler on the 30th of April 2010: “La migrazione alla TV
Digitale Terrestre tra sfide e opportunità”.

32. Audience
As the old analog TV transitions to digital also in Italy, it might be interesting to reflect on the industrial and disciplinary cultures that characterise
broadcasting, the Internet and information technology. In this short talk I’ll try do to it through the lens of three expressions: audience, users and people.
Apparently, they refer to the same thing, but meaning and usage exhibit wide differences. Let’s start with “audience”.

33. Retrieved online with no permission! It will be removed if it violates copyright.
That’s pretty much what we mean by “audience” usually.

34. Family watching television c. 1958 National Archives and Records Administration retrieved on Wikipedia
This is a setting with a long history, starting in the post-war TV boom era.

35. VHS heaven or ... hell by Makekessnoise 2006 Creative Commons 2.0 retrieved on Flickr
The first wave of personalisation came with the videotape - not considering here analog cable, as Italy didn’t experience it.

36. PVRs made a much bigger difference: personalisation became an essential aspect of consumption, breaking down undifferentiated audience and requiring
to re-exam interruption advertising, historically the main source of revenue of traditional broadcasting.
!

37. But beside legal consumption, personalisation happens also though peer-to-peer file sharing - have a look here at this TV series episodes Torrent files.

38. YouTube, 3-screens, Facebook, widgets.
The last three years have been exciting!
for the TV consumer
[Montpetit 2009]
Marie-José Montpetit 2009,Your content, your network, your devices: Social Networks meet your TV experience
Summing up yet another round of recent trends you get something close to a revolution.

39. Let’s not forget games - PONG is turning almost forty. TV “audience” has not been only passive over the last few decades.

40. Wii sports pt 1 fight by Cowboy Ben Alman 2008 Creative Commons 2.0 retrieved on Flickr
Nowadays people, or well, “audience”, don’t just lay on the sofa. TV can get pretty active and physical.

41. TV watching has always been
a mix of “lean forward” and “lean back”
close viewer engagement with shows,
versus less active
(and possibly less positive)
“couch potato” watching
[Barkhuus and Brown 2009; Silverstone 1994]
Louise Barkhuus and Barry Brown 2009, Unpacking the Television: User Practices around a Changing Technology
So yes, the concept of “audience” as a bunch of passive consumers of broadcasting and traditional advertising has indeed some foundations, but on the other hand it is alo
true that some level of participation and personalisation came in relatively early and has shaped the evolution of the media in some deep ways.

42. Users
Let’s switch now to “users” - this is the language in the software and systems world, a true mainstay of technology parlance.

43. Human Computers 1949 NACA-NASA Public Domain retrieved on Wikipedia
Here we have some curious, ironic kind of turns with meanings. Time ago, “computers” were those in charge of doing lengthy calculations, exactly the ones that then have
been hander over to digital computers intended as machines.

44. +
Fast forward to contemporary times, and this is what we get: people are symbols in a schema, points of interaction in a diagram, as it happens typically in a specification
document. I’m exaggerating, right, but perhaps this emphasis on process and flow should raise some questions.

45. First, designers must understand who the users will be
[Gould and Lewis 1985]
John D. Gould and Clayton Lewis 1985, Designing for Usability: Key Principles and what Designers Think
The idea of putting “people first” emerged quite late in the technology world. In their mid-80s classic paper on User-Centred Design Gould and Lewis stated that
“understand who the users will be” should be a basic tenet of system design.

46. UX
User Experience
User Research
Interaction Design
Design Research
IxD
Usability
Human Factors
Computer Human Interaction
Gould and Lewis seminal article is part of a much broader movement that has been rising enormously over the last 30 years, embracing a number of related disciplines
and work practices.

47. [...] within the technology design literature,!
television has been much neglected
[Barkhuus-Brown 2009]
Louise Barkhuus and Barry Brown 2009, Unpacking the Television: User Practices around a Changing Technology
Oddly enough, in the HCI field, according to some, there has not been great attention to the analysis of TV consumption. Much of the HCI studies focused initially on work-
oriented activities and contexts, giving the fact that computers were predominant there. Personal computing, home usage and mobile followed, with no particular extensive
literature on the TV as such.

48. Digital Birmingham retrieved on http://www.digitalbirmingham.co.uk/
Even more so for a new and still niche domain like interactive services for digital terrestrial TV.

49. Barkhuus and Brown 2009 Unpacking the Television: User Practices around a
Changing Technology!
Obrist et al. 2009 Connecting TV & PC: An In-Situ Field Evaluation of an
Unified Electronic Program Guide Concept!
Simons 2009 Me TV:Towards Changing TVViewing Practices?!
Tsekleves et al. 2009 Bringing the Television Experience to other Media in the
Home: An Ethnographic Study!
Tuomi 2009 A Brief History of iTV Entertainment
Williams et al. 2009 An Emergent Role for TV in Social Communication!
Wilfinger et al 2009 Evaluating and Investigating an iTV Interaction Concept in
the Field!
Hess 2009 Explore Social Behavior around Rich-Media: A Structured
Diary Study!
Janseen 2009 Interactive Television Format Development – Could Participatory
Design Bridge the Gap?
This is the result of a quick and dirty search on studies published in the year 2009 - not that much.

50. Lego People Photography Joe Shlabotnik 2006 Creative Commons 2.0 retrieved on Flickr
But academic articles aside, perhaps there is a deeper question. Shouldn’t we look at the concept itself, the idea of “user”? Are “user advocates” all on the safe side?

51. [User-centered Design]
it’s almost a religion in our design schools,
but it is in fact an incomplete philosophy
that lacks a sense of responsibility for concerns
other than those of the immediate end-user
[Schweikardt 2009]
Eric Schweikardt, User Centered is Off Center 2009
In the HCI and design community, very recently UCD has been put under a critical light, with an increasing awareness that the underlying idea of “users”
might be flawed.

52. Within the HF [human factors] approach,!
the human is often reduced to being
another system component
[Bannon 1991]
Liam Bannon, From Human Factors to Human Actors 1991
This not entirely new - Liam Bannon raised the very same question already in 1991.

53. The bad or problematic user is the one
that does not embrace the system or device.
This creates a moral problem,
a stain to be eradicated.
[Satchell-Dourish 2009]
Christine Satchell, Paul Dourish, Beyond the User: Use and Non-Use in HCI 2009
The problematic aspect is related to the implicit primacy given to the machines. A recent study on no usage highlights prejudices and assumptions common even in the
HCI literature. There is a sort of moral judgment against those that “resist” technology adoption.

54. Everett M. Rogers 1995, Diffusion of Innovations
This sort of “(technology) adoption ethics” is somewhat reflected also in classic representation of innovation dynamics.

55. People
So finally let’s look at people.

56. Perhaps we should look at Philosophy. The book in the photo was and perhaps still is a classic for Philosophy students in Italy - I am very much in debt with it. It’s the
“Philosophy Dictionary” of Nicola Abbagnano. If you get the Italian, in the picture you might notice the article on “Persona” (Person). Heavy stuff! But we can’t venture into
this territory. To me, it’s just crucial that we seriously question these concepts, and think about our language, and all of the implications it raises.

57. Here we have something lighter and more recent. This video has been an hit in the US. The old woman interviewed by the host has been playing in a short film, a spoof of
a public service announcement about the switch to digital TV. This is real people I think - sure, very much the TV way, with all the tempo and sophistication of professional
production, but I think it helps in getting the all thing from a better, more realistic perspective.

58. Audience as users (and viceversa)
User research
(not necessarily “user-centric”)
Attitude and sensitivity
(beside process and methods)
I’ll try to draw some conclusions.
First, talking about “audience”, “users” and “people” tells a lot about all of the cultural and industrial frameworks in which these expressions are used. There are many
implicit assumptions and stereotypes that need questioning and exploration.
In this respect, I think there is an opportunity for new user studies or user research endeavours, especially when it comes to a poorly investigated domain like interactivity
and digital TV. This doesn’t mean embracing a “user centric” approach. It matters more that the actual research makes an effort to get closer to people lives.
In fact, as a final word, I’d say that beside good process and methods, what is needed is a renewed sensitivity and better attitude to understand the nuances and the
richness of everyday life.

59. Grazie
lgalli@pobox.com!
http://www.lgalli.it

60. Crediti relativi a immagini e video non coperti da licenze Creative Commons o altre licenze di pubblico dominio, riprodotti in questa
presentazione per puro uso di critica e di discussione, secondo l’art. 70 della legge italiana sul diritto d’autore e la legislazione degli Stati
Uniti sul fair use.!
!
Slide 3 The Simpson copyright FOX!
Slide 6 TiVO logo copyright TiVO!
Slide 7 Ted torrent episode downloader http://www.ted.nu!
Slide 9 PONG presumibilmente copyright Atari fonte Wikipedia!
Slide 28 Talkshow with Spike Ferensten, produzione FOX, fonte http://www.break.com!
Slide 30 Mae Laborde 2007 http://www.growingbolder.com!
!
Legge 22 aprile 1941 n. 633!
Protezione del diritto d'autore e di altri diritti connessi al suo esercizio!
Art. 70!
1. Il riassunto, la citazione o la riproduzione di brani o di parti di opera e la loro comunicazione al pubblico sono liberi se effettuati per
uso di critica o di discussione, nei limiti giustificati da tali fini e purché non costituiscano concorrenza all'utilizzazione economica
dell'opera; se effettuati a fini di insegnamento o di ricerca scientifica l'utilizzo deve inoltre avvenire per finalità illustrative e per fini non
commerciali.!
1-bis. È consentita la libera pubblicazione attraverso la rete internet, a titolo gratuito, di immagini e musiche a bassa risoluzione o
degradate, per uso didattico o scientifico e solo nel caso in cui tale utilizzo non sia a scopo di lucro. Con decreto del Ministro per i beni
e le attività culturali, sentiti il Ministro della pubblica istruzione e il Ministro dell’università e della ricerca, previo parere delle
Commissioni parlamentari competenti, sono definiti i limiti all’uso didattico o scientifico di cui al presente comma.!
2. Nelle antologie ad uso scolastico la riproduzione non può superare la misura determinata dal regolamento, il quale fissa la modalità
per la determinazione dell'equo compenso.!
3. Il riassunto, la citazione o la riproduzione debbono essere sempre accompagnati dalla menzione del titolo dell'opera, dei nomi
dell'autore, dell'editore e, se si tratti di traduzione, del traduttore, qualora tali indicazioni figurino sull'opera riprodotta.!
!
Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107.!
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use
by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment,
news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.