We believe that the extensive findings and discussion we have just presented could provide thoughtfully insight into the development of future social television on sport events.
Moving from research to design, we now briefly propose some possible design suggestion as the guide to support and encourage the sociable television viewing experience around sport events.
6.1 Content selection and sharing
6.1.1 Promoting synchronize interaction during sport events
In the research, we could see people show highly demands on live broadcasting of sport events, and all of them expressed to watch sport events with others would be much joyful and entertaining than watch alone. Combining the concerns, we suggested that designer could emphasis and explore more features aimed at easing and promoting watching sport events together and encouraging synchronizes interaction during the sport events.
For promoting watching together, designer might provide a filtering system which could searching the best sport game based on user and their peers’ preference and the significant game criteria which we mention above, and further put these games into their viewing schedule. Conversely, by mapping and noticing the same game they have scheduled could also helpful to bring them to watch together.
Moreover, in other to gathering as many people as possible, both sport peers and strangers should take into consideration, as we could see people already showing the tendency to watch with strangers during sport events. The system should support synchronizes interaction not only with the acquaintance but with the strangers who shared the same interested with the users.
Finally, there are some subtle need should be aware when promoting watching together.
First, although antagonists and strangers seems bring good value to the social interaction during the game, people still hold an conservative attitude if they do not acquaintances with the viewer. Therefore, designer should avoid the frustration by only invite the close peers and explicitly showing the preferences of other strangers. Second, encourage the collocate viewing if possible, as we could see the physical contact could take more advantage than
remote viewer on the social interaction.
6.1.2 Using social information as a content filter
The loosely structure and fast updating of sport genres make the sport content are ample, fragile and miscellaneous. To deal with it, people would observe the mass reaction as a guide to choose the content, since others reaction might reflect the importance of the content and watching the comments could also bring pleasure to them. As all these advantage already shown, designer should not only provide the sport content based on the users’ preference, but more to allowing the attachment of social information to help the user to find out the content they interested most.
In other to use the social information to its full potential, designer might set variety of social filters to construct a satisfying and efficiently content selection mechanism. For example, instead of showing the traditional popularity, such as most view, most comments, top rated and so on. Designer could also separate the social information from users’ peers and other strangers, as sometimes people might only want to know more about their peers’
reaction.
Moreover, designer might provide the most desirable sport events content by cross mapping the users’ preference and the social information, and provide a customized rank list which allow user could find the interested content in a faster pace. For example, design might provide a “Daily hottest pack” which allow user could updating the most interested sport issues in a short time.
To be mentioned here, the system should both support both during and after the games, as we have already seen people using the social information on the BBS in both way.
Designer should always allow the sport fans have the best chance to get into the “sport herd”.
6.1.3 Encouraging to share important materials
We have seen the important moments and significant games of sport events are not only determine sport fans’ viewing behaviors, but played an important role on the social interaction with others. These important materials motivate peoples’ social behaviors by ensuring the appreciation from others. Therefore, it is worth for designer to put more attention on these important materials.
As we discuss above, the more overleaping importance on the information, the more possibility to be appreciated by others. For example, to share burst events from the mega game which related to the receiver’s’ favorite player might have the best chance to be replied. Hence, designer could use the important criteria and preference of others to help the user to identify the most “suitable” link between the information and the receivers, such as recommending who might interested in the information
Designer should also support and lower the effort of sharing activities. The system should providing features which allow user to easily editing and annotating the important materials and convergence the share channel with others’ familiar media. The timing of encouraging sharing activity should always happen once users have received the important materials, since that they would be most desirable to share that time.
6.2 Communication
6.2.1 Supporting attention switching with game flow
As the results reveal, the loosely structure of sport events not only provided plenty pauses and opportunities for interaction, but directs the communication topics by switching peoples’ attention while watching. Since the viewing and social activities both cost peoples’
attention, designer should support the switching activities with the game flow to smooth the watching and communicating experience during sport events. (Figure 6.1)
Providing the “right timing” for social interaction during sport events would be the first challenge to the designer. People usually talk and interact more while those unimportant moments, since their attention would be less focus on the screen, social activities could be encourage more while these periods. Additionally, the shifting attention makes people afford higher cognitive social behavior, such as editing, annotating and sharing the highlight, or communication via text chat.
On the other hand, although people also claim they would talk, shouting and celebrating while important moments during sport events, they still devote lots of their attention on the screen. Therefore, designer should provide communication tools with lower effort and less time consuming to support their social interaction, such as emoticon or voice chat.
Figure 6-1 Using different communication modalities to support peoples’ attention switch
Besides, as we seen in the finding, people might lost the context of the game while the switching their attention to other activities. Designer should ensure the smooth switching experience by helping the user could constantly link to the context of the game. For example, using a special voice cue to notice the important moments happened, such as the burst events. Other solution might be real-time recoding the content and make the bookmarks on those important moments, in case if people miss something, they could check these bookmarks for a quick review.
6.2.2 Maximizing the celebration on important moments
We have seen there are important moments during the games could aggregating people emotion and create the huge excitement and pleasure atmosphere. As this phenomenon seems a signature capability of sport events, we suggest designer should maximize the celebration on important moments to reach its full potentials and further raise the
“liminality" effect.
The goal is clear, to make the user to feel and engage the mass reaction and emotion to the greatest extent. As finding indicate that multi-sensory might enlarge the feeling of
“liminality" effect. Designer should allow the variety modality for the presentation of the mass reaction and participating of the celebration. For instance, designer might not only use sound and visual to show the aggregating emotion, such as an exaggerative animation, but also to use the sense of touch, such as the vibration of the remote control to make the user actually feel the “crowd”.
On the other hand, as we mention above, the social interaction for celebrating should be effortless and less time consuming. Therefore, directly communication tools would be much suitable for the celebration, such as emoticon and voice chat. Similarly, adding kinesthesis for input peoples’ reaction might also seems valuable to enlarge the excitement, such as waving the remote control.
To aggregating the emotion to the greatest extent, designer might stimulate the social interaction via rising against situation which encouraging and presenting both supporters’
and antagonists’ comments. When presenting the reaction, strangers and peers should all take into consideration to reach the largest amount of people. However, when presenting users’ reaction, designer should give the chose for user due to the acquaintance concerns.
6.3 Community building
6.3.1 Building community around players and teams
Throughout the research, we found the players and teams not only affect peoples’
viewing and social behavior, but create a sense of community by providing a clear target to aggregating the emotion and comments from people who shared same interest. The explicitly presence of preference make people are much willing to interact with the strangers.
Since people also showing the tendency to expand their social fabric, we believe the players and teams would be a great starting point to enlarge their sport community.
To enhance the sense of community, the designer might start with creating an attractive virtual space related to a particular player or team for gathering the fans. The virtual space, which is the fans’ club, visualize the existence of community and provide a united platform allowing the fans could easily exchange idea and information about the player or team.
Designer should also heighten the users’ identification of the community in variety way.
Decorating the club together or letting members have a shared iconic might be a good try.
For example, people might have the chance to provide the design source or even joint the design process of the club. The fans’ avatar in the club might also wear a shirt with the players’ logo to display their loyalty to the club.
However, the social interaction and attitude between members might still inactive due to unfamiliar with each other. Therefore, designer might consider providing activities related to the player or teams to stimulate the interaction, such as the performance static forecast
and gambling. Moreover, people might still hold certain conservative attitude toward the fans, at least they are strangers. So, the interaction should treat with caution, such as using the text chat as the main communication modality.
6.4 Status updating
6.4.1 Showing the preference and viewing status
Sport fans are quite sensitive when they interact with others, as we all known people hold a conservative attitude toward strangers and sometime even their peers, and they only motivated to interact when they are sure their behaviors might be appreciate by others. To create a satisfying social experience around sport events, we strongly suggest designer should showing peoples’ preference and viewing status as clear as possible. By this way, they might avoid the frustration of interaction via the appropriate social behavior, and further open their mind to interact with others.
More important, the showing viewing status should consider both individual and group.
As people might belong to separate peers group, they might hope the interaction would stay in the same group in order to avoid the fail social experience. By displaying the group viewing status, people could avoid to disturb friends’ group viewing experience or be disturbed when they watch with their peers.
We recommend designer could create a buddies list based on the structure and interrelationship of the peer groups we have found. Here, we provide some possible features to demonstrate how the buddies list might work like. First, grouping the peers, the visualize separate could help people to interact more efficiently and appropriately. For example, people could send a group viewing invitation or a specific information for every members without disturb peers in other groups.
Second, ranking the social interaction priority, the system might cross-mapping the current viewing status, personal preference and intimacy which based on the stronger ties we found to recommend the most available peers for social interaction. Finally, automatic status change, as people might sometime want to interact with others and other times preferring to focus on the screen due to the switch natural of sport events. Constantly changing their viewing status might make them feel disturbing; therefore the automatic status change might reduce the effort but still ensure the most suitable timing for social interaction while watching sport events.