Exploring Social TV

Lynne Baillie, Peter Frhlich, Raimund Schatz

FTW (Telecommunications Research Center Vienna)
Donau-City-Strasse, Vienna, 1220, Austria
Baillie; froehlich; schatz; @ftw.at

Abstract. In this user study, we explored the

application concept of Social TV, which aims at
providing remote users with a joint TV
experience. 15 pairs of friends watched TV in 2
separate rooms, using a social TV application.
We found that the majority of the test users
would like to use a social TV application in the
future, especially for sporting events and TV
shows.
In our study we compared 3 different
situations of jointly watching TV: a) remotely,
using graphic symbols (e.g. emoticons), b)
remotely, using voice chat, and, as a control
group, c) watching TV while co-located. Both the
joint TV watching experience and social
presence was significantly lower for the graphic
symbols condition than for the other conditions.
Interestingly,
neither
the
subjects
characterisation nor their behaviour differed
significantly between the remote audio chat and
the face-to-face condition. Empirical design
guidance for audio chat and graphic symbols
communication in the context of Social TV is
presented.

Keywords.

Interactive
Dialogue, Presence, HCI

Television,

Social

graphic symbols (e.g. avatar expressions and

emoticons).
To date, there has been little research into
how Social TV might encourage social discourse
or enhance the TV experience, or in which
context it might be particularly useful. The only
relevant study [4] in this regard provided a
comparison of different visual display techniques
for peripheral awareness of remote friends while
watching TV.

Figure 1: Example screenshot of AmigoTV

In order to gain more insight into the general

expectations and acceptance of the social TV
concept and to investigate both the audio chat
and graphic symbols features of AmigoTV, we
conducted a user study. In the remainder of this
section, the background and research questions
for our user study are explained in detail.

1. Introduction
2. Acceptance of Social TV
It is often more fun to watch a major sports
game or a popular show on TV together with
friends than alone. This fundamental observation
and recent technological advances, such as fast
broadband access and digital TV, have given rise
to application ideas referred to as social TV ([2,
3, 4]. Social TV aims at providing two or more
remote TV consumers with a joint TV watching
and communication experience.
AmigoTV ([3], see Fig.1) is a fusion of
television programming with instant messaging.
It allows the users to form buddy groups with
whom they can communicate while watching
television, using audio chat and pre-defined

While on the one hand the idea of enabling

TV-watchers to meet up with remote friends and
to comment on TV shows of common interest is
intriguing, there are also some potential sources
of rejection by users. The frequently observed
reluctance towards interactive television
services, caused by the TV consumers passive
lean-back attitude [1], may be a likely obstacle.
Other concerns might be privacy and a lack of
usage contexts in which remote joint watching is
more useful than collocated watching.
In this regard our first research question was:
What are the general users expectations and

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Proceedings of the ITI 2007 29 Int. Conf. on Information Technology Interfaces, June 25-28, 2007, Cavtat, Croatia

reactions towards the social TV concept and

under which circumstances would they like to
use it?

2.1 Media Types

SocialTV is a form of computer mediated
communication (CMC). In this aspect it is
comparable to conferencing and collaborative
tools in the work or e-learning context [6]. One
fundamental concept and quality criterion for all
these CMC application areas is social presence,
the sense of being together [6, 7]. Furthermore,
as in other CMC application areas, it is generally
important to minimize attention distraction from
the primary (in this case: TV-) content. However,
unlike in the more efficiency-oriented areas of
CMC and e-learning, the users TV watching
experience, enjoyment and satisfaction is also
very important. TV consumers decide themselves
which channel they watch and which service
they use, mostly based on intrinsic and
hedonistic motivation [1].
AmigoTV is designed with these goals in
mind. Its main interaction feature voice chat
enables users to jointly comment on TV content
just as they are used to in co-located TV
sessions. The second feature comprises graphic
visual symbols overlaid over the TV content.
Viewers can either express themselves by
adjusting the appearance of their persistently
displayed avatar or by sending symbols (such as
emoticons) to their co-watchers. The idea behind
this is to convey a sense of peripheral awareness
of others activities and to provide a means of
non-verbal,
non-binding,
means
of
communication.
These issues led to our second research
question, which was: To what extent do a) audio
chat and b) symbolic graphical communication in
general facilitate social presence, focus of
attention, and an enhanced joint TV watching
experience?

2.2 Design guidance

Since the use of audio chat and graphical
communication in the context of social TV are
new, it is not yet clear how to best design them.
For instance, it is not trivial to decide on the
control mode for audio chat. The chosen method
in AmigoTV is a toggle button on the TV remote
control to switch the microphone on or off.
However, potentially more viewer control (pushto-talk) or less viewer control (microphone is

always on) might be preferred by TV viewers.

Furthermore, a hands-free method, such as by
means of voice activity detection (shout-totalk) might be beneficial. We also thought that
it would be interesting to know, whether viewers
would prefer to use a headset or table
microphone. For the graphic symbolic
interaction, it is not yet clear how many symbols
should be available and what users would like to
express with them. This led to our third question
and the final one that will be covered in this
paper: Which design features are crucial for a)
audio
chat
and
b)
symbolic
visual
communication to maximize viewer satisfaction
and enjoyment?

3. Method
15 pairs of friends (i.e. 30 subjects) were
invited for the user study and received a small
monetary
incentive.
The
test
sample
corresponded to the young target user population
identified for AmigoTV in several marketingoriented focus groups. The users ranged in age
from 20-35 (average age 27); gender,
professional status and technical expertise were
balanced. On average, the users reported
watching TV for 8 hours a week, 5 had used the
interactive services available on their televisions;
all but one had prior experience with some form
of chat service. Our focus was to let them view
the television programmes but to also interact
with the interactive service to chat to their friend
whenever they wanted to.
When using AmigoTV, the subjects were
located in 2 separate rooms at our laboratories.
Both rooms were arranged with typical leisure
accessories and furniture including a large-screen
television set. 4 TV channels, streamed from an
in-house server, were available for the test
persons as their TV programs. For each test,
the user behavior and comments were videocaptured and logged.
The general procedure for each test consisted
of: a welcome, an expectations interview, a brief
usability evaluation (this was for design input
and will not be reported upon in this paper), a
media type comparison, a design alternatives
comparison, and a final interview.

216

3.1 Expectations Interview

The semi-structured expectations interview
was designed to gain knowledge about the users
expectations and acceptance of the general
concept of social TV (Q1).

3.2 Media Type Comparison

This part of the study was designed to provide
information about the ability of voice chat and
graphical symbolic communication to convey
presence, attention focus and TV watching
experience (Q2). It had a one-factor, withinsubjects design. In 3 situations throughout each
of the 15 test sessions, the two subjects were
asked to watch a specified TV channel together.
The channel consisted of a specifically selected
sequence of a music TV channel. The three
situations of jointly watching TV were specified
as follows (the order of these situations was
varied between subjects, each situation had a
duration of 4 minutes):
1. Face-to-face: This situation had the function
of a control condition. The users were jointly
watching TV in the same room on a couch.
2. Audio chat: The users were jointly watching
TV in 2 separate rooms, using the audio chat
feature.
3. Graphic symbolic communication: While
jointly watching TV, the subjects used the
graphical symbolic communication feature.
They were given a list with explanations
about the meaning of each of the provided
symbols.
After each of these 3 situations, the users
were asked to fill in a questionnaire containing
items for measuring perceived social presence (7,
5), and self-developed items to elicit attention
focus towards the TV and the other person,
perceived privacy concerns and 6 adjective pairs
to characterise the enjoyment experienced in the
situation. Furthermore, the subjects were asked
to provide a ranking of the 3 media types.
For 4 randomly chosen pairs of subjects (i.e.
N=8), we conducted a behavioural analysis of the
video material captured during the 3 mentioned
different media type comparison situations.

3.3 Design Alternatives Comparison

This part of the study aimed at providing
some more knowledge on specific design aspects
of the audio chat and graphical symbolic

communication feature (Q3). Also this part had a

one-factor within subjects design. The subjects
were asked to jointly watch TV and to try out the
following 4 audio chat control types:
Toggle: A remote control toggle button has
to be pressed to switch the microphone on
and off (currently implemented in
AmigoTV)
Push-to-talk: In order to talk to the other TVwatcher, the user has to keep a button
pressed.
Always-on: As long as the user is in a chat
room, the microphone is on.
Shout-to-talk: When the user speaks loud, he
can be heard; when he whispers, he will not
be heard.
For each of the alternatives, the users were
asked to provide comments, ratings on
satisfaction and the joint TV experience
facilitated by the technique, as well as an overall
preference ranking. They were also asked about
their preferences regarding using a headset as
opposed to a table microphone. The subjects
were asked to specify the kind of information
they would like to express by the graphic
symbols provided by AmigoTV.

3.4 Final Interview

The semi-structured final interview was
designed to gather the users reactions and
opinions regarding the system concept (Q1), the
different media types (Q2) and about design
ideas for the audio chat and graphical
communications feature (Q3).

4. Results
Due to technical problems in one test, the data
of 29 subjects was considered for analysis. The
statistical significance values reported in this
paper are based on Wilcoxon tests for paired
samples (N=29).

4.1 Acceptance of Social TV (Q1)

In the Expectations Interview, all (except
two) of the test participants thought that would
like to use such a Social TV application. The
majority of the interviewees thought that they
would use Social TV when they were alone at
home, preferably in the evening. The test persons
could best imagine using AmigoTV during sports

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4.2 Media type comparison (Q2)

One major result from the media type
comparison is that the perceived joint TV
watching experience was significantly lower for
the graphical symbolic communication than for
both the audio chat and the face-to-face situation
(p<.05). Interestingly, the perceived joint TV
watching experience did not differ significantly
between the audio chat and the face-to-face
condition (see Fig.2, left side).

Social Presence

Joint TV Experience

broadcasts or quiz shows. In addition, the users

mentioned several times that they would like to
use the application to bridge commercial breaks.
One third of the users explicitly said that feature
films would not be the right broadcast type for
AmigoTV.
About 80 percent of the users thought that
they would like to use a system with a buddy list
feature that informs them which of their friends
is also watching and whether they are available
for communication. About 60 percent of the
subjects could imagine using an audio chat
feature with a headset. Only 40 percent wanted
to use a feature for graphical symbolic
communication (e.g. emoticons).
The most often mentioned additional
SocialTV feature was a chat function, however
with a standard keyboard, not a remote control.
Another additional feature deemed essential by
one third of the users in the interview was a
video display of the communication partner.
The impressions and reactions captured in the
final interview were quite consistent with the
expectations mentioned before the test. The
majority of test persons found the social TV idea
to support communication while watching TV
very interesting. On average, the users said that
they could see themselves using a social TV
application for 3.5 hours a week and 7 (35%) of
the test persons wouldnt spend any time using it.
It is interesting to note that 2 of the users (7% of
the test persons) said that they would keep it
running all the time while watching TV.

5
4
3
2

5
4
3
2

1
Face

Audio

Graphic

Face

Audio

Graphic

Figure 2: Mean rating of joint TV experience

and social presence, for the situations
Face-to-Face (Face), Audio chat (Audio), and
Graphical symbols feature (Graphic); error
bars representing 95% confidence interval

In the same way, the perceived social

presence in the audio chat and the face-to-face
condition was similar. It was also slightly, but
significantly higher than in the graphic symbols
condition. (p<.05, see Fig.2, right side).
When asked for their subjective preference,
however, 80% of the subjects ranked the face-toface situation highest, the audio chat situation,
second and the graphic symbols situation lowest.
On average, they stated that they would use the
audio chat 90% of the time and the graphical
communication feature only 10% of the time.
In the behavioural analysis we found that,
when jointly watching TV during the face-toface situation, the subjects were on average
actually looking at each other only 1 to 5 times
per minute (average: 3.5 times; for a duration of
0.5 to 3 sec). Interestingly, the subjects were
talking for a similar amount of time during the
face-to-face situation as during the audio chat
situation: for both situations the mean observer
rating was 4.2 (according to a 7-point rating
scale from 1=never talking to 7=always talking).
This observation is consistent with the similar
subjective measurements for these two situations
reported above.

4.3 Design guidance (Q3)

For the audio chat control alternatives,
subjects experienced a significantly better joint
TV experience with the low-activity techniques
(on-off toggle and always-on) than with the highactivity techniques (push-to-talk and shout-totalk, p<.05 see Fig.3, left side). When using the
on-off toggle, the users rarely switched the
button off, and when using push-to-talk,
practically all test persons kept the button
pressed all the time. Thus, there does not seem to
be a need to ensure deactivation of the
microphone. The shout-to-talk technique was

218

Mean Preference Ranking

Joint TV watching experience

problematic, because it took some time for the

users to efficiently control their voice level.

6
5
4
3
2
1

1
Toggle Always

Push

Shout

Toggle Always

Push

Shout

Figure 3: Ratings of joint TV watching

experience and Mean Preference Rankings
for 4 audio chat control techniques: On-off
toggle, always-on, push-to-talk, and shout-totalk

condition suggests that visual gesture and facial

turn-taking cues do not seem to have as large an
impact on communication quality in the social
TV setting compared to other CMC settings.
Future research should aim at comparing a
broader set of media types in the social TV
setting, including video and text chat.
Furthermore, we aim to conduct a longitudinal
study in users homes to gather information on
the usage of social TV during longer durations.

6. Acknowledgements

It seems that the on-off toggle alternative is

the most suitable choice for audio chat in a social
TV application. It was preferred significantly
more often to both the push-to-talk and the
shout-to-talk technique (p<.05, see Fig.3, right
side). Due to privacy concerns mentioned by
some of the subjects, always-on was only
significantly preferred to shout-to-talk (p<.05).
We were interested in whether the users
preferred a table microphone to using a headset,
we found that 50% prefer the table microphone,
30% the headset, and about 20% had no specific
preference. Most test persons could envision
using the graphic symbols as emoticons (75%),
to show their attitude towards the TV content or
to provide cues for meta-communication, e.g.
signalling the preparedness for an audio chat.

5. Conclusions
In this user study, we: investigated the user
expectations and reactions to the social TV
concept, compared the suitability of voice chat
and graphic communication for social TV, and
finally we provided guidance on design questions
concerning
voice
chat
and
graphical
communication.
The most fundamental result of our study is
that social TV is a highly attractive application
concept for its target users and for many types of
broadcast content. Another notable result is that
especially voice chat is a very useful feature to
remotely communicate while watching TV. In
our study, it seemed to convey a comparable
degree of joint TV experience and social
presence as in collocated TV sessions.
Our observation that users watched each other
only 1 to 5 times per minute in the face-to-face

The work presented here is part of the

projects U2 and SUPRA at the Telecommunications Research Center Vienna (ftw.). The
work was supported by Telekom Austria and the
Kplus program of the Austrian Federal
Government.

7. References
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