Interactive Documentaries: First Usability Studies

Today, research on i-TV focuses primarily on added services, such as interactive advertising [Lekakos et al., 2001] and alternative program suggestion [Ardissono et al., 2001]. Yet new technological improvements on video-on-demand and the success of streaming technology for video delivery on the web will also make feasible, in the near future, video content adaptation. The present work attempts to set the basis for further studies on interactive video productions, such as interactive documentaries. We propose and test a model in which video and audio material can be organized in such a way that the user can choose his/her path through the documentary. While there are plenty of usability studies on standard hypermedia, which are mainly text-based, there are no studies on the kind of hypermedia where text plays a minor role with respect to time-based media, such as video and audio (one exception is [Merlino and Maybury, 1999]). In this work we focus on (the issue of) providing the user with the optimal follow-up, at any given moment in an interactive document. Four different ways of presenting follow-ups have been tested in a controlled experiment with 58 users in a between-subject design. The i-TV scenario was simulated using a RealAudio player embedded in a standard web browser (Netscape Navigator). The results, although preliminary, show that the best way of organizing information is to provide the user with a clear path through the documentary (and therefore limiting his possibility of freely exploring the content) and allowing followups to be selected even when not contextually appropriate.