Interactive design under TV platform: Seven principles of four-direction key interaction

I. Division of BLOCKS

The four-way key (with the confirmation key) differs from the mouse, and is characterized by moving in the focus order. So when there is a lot of content, you need to divide it into one block for quick positioning.

After a block is selected, the specific content is manipulated.

Two or 10 word structure rendering

In many cases, the content needs to be categorized into different "functional blocks" according to different functions. When a functional block contains a large amount of content, the use of a cross structure to ensure that users in any case can quickly switch between functional blocks.

Standard Cross structure:

VARIANT Cross structure:

When there are only two modules (or level two content), consider the transformation of the standard cross structure. This interaction is more convenient than the standard cross structure.

Three, the visual area of elements can be placed in a hierarchical order of focus

The operational elements within the viewable area, whether or not at the same level, are in principle required to be able to move in a plane coordinate order-that is, regardless of the hierarchical relationship, as long as the plane coordinates adjacent, you should be able to set the focus to the top.

It should be noted that the plane coordinates of the focus are likely to produce dynamic changes--in this case, to follow this principle. To change the order of the focus dynamically according to the dynamic change of the screen content.

As shown in figure one, press the left and right key, the focus is switched between "A" and "C".

As shown in figure two, when the scroll bar is pulled to the bottom, the "paging" bar appears, at which point the focus should be shifted between "a", "B", "C" and "three" areas.

When switching between different modules, the default focus problem

In many cases, when you jump from one functional module to another, the default focus follows principle three (that is, the elements within the viewable region can be set in a hierarchical order), and the interaction experience is not necessarily the best. In this case, we should combine specific interaction, user goals, user habits and so on specific design, to find a more appropriate default focus-this needs to follow the strict user testing process, with specific data support to ensure that this is indeed more reasonable, otherwise this principle is not tenable.

Five, "four-direction" key to complete control

Remote control is different from the mouse, the design of remote control more diverse and arbitrary. Currently on the market, there are more than hundreds of remote control, their key number, key function, key layout are very different. In order to avoid risk and create a unified experience, we need to be able to use the "four-direction" key to complete the operation.

Of course, there is one purpose to do this: only use the "four-way" key to operate, the user can not look at the remote control, the visual focus has been on the TV screen. However, if you use the "four-direction" key other than the button, the user in use, the eye will frequently switch between the remote control and TV screen, will frequently interrupt the user's task flow.

In addition, users in the use of "four-direction" key other than the need to think and search, to the user added a lot of additional cognitive, memory burden.

Six, can be operated to focus, directly to the elements to operate

In the interactive and visual design, to do "can be manipulated to focus, directly to the elements to operate." That is, if an element is capable of doing so, then the element should be manipulated directly-instead of splitting the operation of the element into another location.

"Manipulating elements directly" appears to conflict with "partitioning different types of content into functional modules." In fact, as long as the analysis of specific circumstances, to find the unity of opposites between the two, there will be no conflict.

Clear and clear focus to avoid loss of focus and jump

When using the "four-direction" key to operate, all of our actions are focused operations. Focus is critical, we need to combine specific scenarios, through a series of visual, interactive means to strengthen focus, avoid focus loss and jump.

Article source: Samael Ren Shuai