The proliferation of content available in the home and increasingly sophisticated recording and delivery devices pose some interesting challenges to the consumer, programme providers and industry alike. How are viewers going to make their choices of content to watch and to archive in the future? More can be done to create navigational tools and interfaces to contribute to consumers' enjoyment of the experience of finding content, and to keep them with our content or services for longer. The industry has thirty years of experience working with text. However, Television is a very visual medium and we are very visually aware. So why do we not capitalise on this in our design processes? This paper describes a study carried out at the BBC to test various visual design features and to learn from our viewers and users in order to design compelling interfaces for the future. Twelve participants examined nine visually-led interfaces taken from television, the internet, and games. The results of this large study are highlighted in this paper.

This document was originally published in the Conference Publication of the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC 2003) Amsterdam 11th-15th September 2003.