Extending the field of view: a human-centred design perspective on 360° TV

Omnidirectional video (ODV) is a type of video that presents viewers with a new type of interactivity. It enables people to look around in a 360° view of the recorded dynamic scene as if they are controlling the camera themselves. ODV presents opportunities for new interactive television formats. The development of such new formats, however, is accompanied by challenges in terms of user experience and technical and creative development. In this article, we discuss issues and opportunities tied to televising ODV from a user perspective. These findings are the result of a human-centred design study. In this study, we introduced 20 potential users to ODV, as this was new to them. We gathered their feedback on the demonstration, and then encouraged them to envision suitable ODV-based enhancements of television genres. This article offers a discussion of both the methodology (including a form of laddering) applied in the study and the user research findings. We found that people see an added value in ODV under certain conditions (e.g. enabling exploration), but that there are also a number of bottlenecks such as the concern to miss key parts of a television programme while looking around.