Additional media activities

Television experiences expand beyond navigating to and viewing television programmes. Benford et al. (2009) introduced the concept of trajectories of user experiences that pass through space, time, roles and interfaces. Additional media activities may be seen as extending or altering a user’s trajectory for a specific television programme. These additional activities may occur on the device used for watching the television content or a host of other devices. Television sets may also be used to present non-programme content.

The concept of providing non-programme information as part of the television experience has been part of broadcast television for a long time. The first of these systems was the BBC’s Ceefax teletext service which was broadcast from 1974 (BBC, 2013a). Ceefax provided users with information such as news, weather, sports scores, scheduling information, and lifestyle features (e.g., recipes and share prices) (Hand, 2012). Within the current digital broadcasting systems, teletext services are still available offering similar content with the addition of some new interactive features. Teletext services display predominantly textual information on the screen. In some cases, this completely obfuscates the picture, as with the early Ceefax system, or appears as a graphical overlay on top of the television material as with the current BBC Red Button interface.

With the spread of internet access, much of this information became available online via PCs. This development also saw the creation of websites which contained information about specific shows and forums in which fans could discuss the content. While originally most sites were created by the fan-community, the programme creators began to provide official sites (Gillan, 2011). Many shows now have official web-pages that provide additional content such as character profiles, mini-games, behind-the-scenes footage, interviews, further information on topics, or even in some cases with drama exclusive mini-episodes covering sub-plots. As internet and traditional broadcast methods converge and television experiences spread across a wide variety of devices, the boundary between teletext and web-browsing experiences becomes harder to define. Most connected devices offer web browsers or third-party applications that allow users to access the same information that could be accessed through these systems. It seems, therefore, that systems like this that draw information from the internet could be viewed as no more than specialised browsers. It follows that these elements may actually be experienced on other devices that are not involved in presenting the television programmes. When viewing using a connected television, secondary portable devices may be used to access information on the internet, or may be used to display information passed

on from the connected television over the home network. Evidence indicates that this has become common, with multiple reports referring to people using other devices to access information while watching television (Consumer Electronics Association, 2014; The Nielson Company, 2013). This has been exploited by some content producers, who have released apps to allow the audience to receive additional content on mobile devices used alongside a programme experienced on the television. Experiences have been proposed to provide the user with further information on the programme subject through ‘curated’ collections of media (e.g., Basapur et al., 2011; Jaye, 2012), to encourage game-like interaction (e.g., Luyten et al., 2006; Williams, 2013), or social interactions (Basapur et al., 2012) throughout the course of the programme. These systems can be synchronised with the programme either through the use of watermarks embedded in the content, direct messages sent to the second device from the broadcaster, or through sending time-coded messages from the primary device to the second device using a local network (2nd Screen Society, n.d.).

Much of the work in this field has considered applications which display information on small personal device screens. Recent work from BBC Research & Development (n.d.b), however, proposes a future in which users’ walls are used as elements of the television display using ‘smart wallpaper’. Such displays are intended to present additional information, increase immersion and allow the television experience to expand beyond the traditional confines of the screen (BBC Research & Development, n.d.b). Conversely, it has recently become possible to include curated interactive content within an on-screen programme through embedded video technologies (e.g., Touchcast, n.d.). These technologies allow the content producers to position additional content, such as polls, live feeds and related media, on the screen alongside the main content (Touchcast, n.d.). Though these tools are initially intended for PC or tablet use, with the increasing capabilities of televisions it is fully believable that such experiences will be possible on connected televisions in the near future. In some ways, this technology seems a natural progression from the ‘Red Button’, providing curated or user-selected content alongside the programme. Though this technology is new and interaction patterns for televisual experiences are yet to be defined, it would seem likely that this way of presenting content will become part of the television user experience of the future.

A technology has been developed by BBC Research and Development called ‘universal control’ (Barrett et al., 2011a, b), which allows multiple devices to communicate with a STB over the home network. With little requirement for additional technology, a wide range of devices is available to control or to be controlled by the television content, extending the display

beyond a single screen and the interface away from the traditional remote control. Whilst the examples mentioned so far have all been screen based, universal control has the potential to be exploited for less conventional display technologies. Some researchers have been exploring the use of off-screen tangible objects to enhance the user experience. A notable demonstration of this was the modification of a toy character from the BBC show Dr. Who so that the toy would move and make sound effects at specific points in the show (Jolly & Evans, 2013). The additional media activities that have been outlined in this section vary considerably in terms of the forms of interaction involved, the information they communicate and the context of their use. This project will follow the taxonomy proposed by Hoare & Hinde (2016) (included as Appendix A.2). This taxonomy is used to categorise all additional media activity in relation to a specific television programme. In line with the motivations of this thesis, the taxonomy does not include considerations of device or modality. It should also be noted that accessibility services are classified as part of the main programme and are not considered in this taxonomy. Classifications are based on the content that is presented, when it is experienced and the intention of the person who facilitated the experience. The taxonomy is presented as a tree-like structure to show the stages of classification (Figure 2.4). The first distinction is made between content that the user considers to be related to the main programme at the time of experiencing it (related ) and content which is not (unrelated ). Related content is then further split based on whether it was created or curated as a result of the main programme, by either the makers of the programme or a third party. If this is the case, it is classified as companion content or, otherwise, non-companion content. To illustrate this distinction, consider episode ‘Cities’ from the BBC’s natural history programme Planet Earth II (Devas, 2016). To accompany the series and specific episodes there is a website (BBC, 2016) comprising a host of additional media to accompany the show, such as behind the scenes stories, footage, 360◦ _{videos and image galleries. This is an example of}

companion content because the content has been created, or at least curated, as a result of the show. This is contrasted with a general resource on a species featured in the episode, such as the Wikipedia page on Gray Langurs (Wikipedia Contributors, 2017). This would be considered as non-companion content because, despite the fact the content is related to the main programme, it has not been created or curated as a result of the main programme. The taxonomy then distinguishes between content that is experienced at the same time as the programme (synchronous experience) and content experienced at any other time (asynchronous experience). This categorisation applies to companion, non-companion and

Figure 2.4: Diagrammatic representation of the taxonomy for additional media activities relative to a television programme (Hoare & Hinde, 2016, p.13)

unrelated content.

Synchronous experiences are then split based on whether the experience was intended for synchronous use with the programme (referred to as an orchestrated experience), or if it comprises a general purpose resource selected by the user (referred to as an improvised experience). Orchestrated experiences are then categorised depending whether content is a time-invariant package (fixed ) or whether it includes elements that may change (evolving) such as most popular tweets on a hash tag at the time of watching. The amount that the orchestrator has specified the timing of content is the basis of the next categorisation. Synchronous companion experiences may either be scheduled —where elements are presented at specific points in the programme, partially-scheduled —where groups or chapters of content are delivered at points in the programme, but a user may peruse these at their own pace, and unscheduled —where the user has complete control over the pace of the content. The amount of interaction from the user is highlighted as an important factor by which these experiences may vary but is not classified within the taxonomy. The amount of interaction

is viewed as a continuous scale on which, at one end, a user is completely passive and is displayed additional information, whereas, at the other end, interaction is required to push the experience forward.

To contextualise some of these distinctions, the ‘Autumnwatch’ companion (Jones, 2011) provides a useful example. This package of content comprises images, diagrams and short passages of text. This content has been selected due to its relevance to the main programme and has been created or curated to accompany it. It is, therefore, companion content. Jones (2011) referred to users using this during the main programme and the companion content being delivered as a “linear sequence” alongside the main programme. As the experience occurs at the same time as the main programme, it is a synchronous experience. Furthermore, as the content has been put together for this express purpose, it is clearly orchestrated. The content used in this experience is—for the most part—clearly pre-defined and static, which makes it a fixed content experience. There is, however, also mention of image galleries. If these galleries were populated from a dynamic source (e.g., the highest rated viewer photographs from the website), this would be an evolving content experience. The experience is also considered scheduled, as the content was presented as a linear synchronised sequence alongside the show. In later work using the same content, Brown et al. (N.D.) compared the synchronised experience with one in which the users were provided with all of the content, which they could browse at their own pace. This variation is considered as an unscheduled experience. Jones (2011) refers to the content as being organised in chapters. Had the content been delivered as chapters that the user could navigate through, this would have been considered a partially-scheduled experience. Jones (2011) also makes some mention of the application being used after the user had finished viewing the main programme. As this usage is not alongside the main programme, it would be considered to be an asynchronous experience of companion content. An additional piece of terminology, not discussed within (Hoare & Hinde, 2016), is introduced within this thesis to refer to the content presented in scheduled or partially-scheduled orchestrated synchronous companion experiences that are not present in the main programme. This is referred to as secondary programme content (SPC) to separate it from general purpose companion content and represent the closer link that is likely to be present between the SPC and the content of main programme content (MPC) at the time at which it is presented.