Usability Barriers in Smart TV User Interfaces: A Review and Recommendations

Smart TV is a television set that has the capabilities of processing, storage, and connectivity. Besides these features, smart TV brings app-based entertainment, which is beyond the scope of legacy TV systems. Being a connected device, smart TV is facing numerous challenges not only in the form of security and privacy but also usability and accessibility. For example, a smart TV has access to diverse data sources. Therefore, searching for desired content on a smart TV is difficult and time-consuming. Although, Electronic Program Guides (EPGs) provide some facilities for searching desired contents; yet, scrolling a long list of programs is not welcomed by the viewers. In this paper, we are reviewing the inter and intra-app navigational complexities and their effects on usability, learnability, and cognition. Although, smart TV manufacturers are trying to produce smart TVs with simple to use interfaces; yet, the existing smart TVs interfaces have accessibility and usability issues that are discussed in this paper. This paper further presents some recommendations and guidelines for the design of a universal user interface for smart TV.