Field trial of a dual device user experience for iTV

With the rise in highly capable, mobile and networked secondary devices, the two-screen Enhanced TV is a more plausible proposition today than ever before. This paper presents a field trial of a prototype that aimed to understand a conceptual merger of TV and second screen user experiences. Our prototype concept can be described as a companion device experience that enhances TV viewing by providing auxiliary information and media on a second screen. The additional media is semantically related and synchronized, in terms of timeline, to the TV content. We ran a three-week field trial in 11 households. Participants used our prototype as a companion to their TV shows. We provided a total of 43 episodes from 10 popular TV shows throughout the study period. Overall feedback to our concept was quite positive. 10 out of our 11 participants said they enjoyed the experience. Our prototype allowed participants to better connect with their TV shows and have an enriched social life around TV. We also report some of the discovered user desires regarding user interaction design such as kinds of customization controls needed and the pacing of posts of additional information to the second screen.