From the moment I opened the box, it was clear that a lot of people had spent a lot of time and effort getting the user experience design right on this thing. It's not quite perfect (which I'll get to in a second), but it's pretty damn good for a first- or second- generation product of its complexity. I'm sure that it's UXD has something to do with its quick adoption (they just signed up their 1,000,000th user in November).

The set-up of Tivo is kind of tricky--certainly harder than most software/hardware to install--and yet I had it up and running in under an hour. It involves the always-delicate hooking up of stuff to the TV, DVD, cable box, telephone (!), and stereo receiver. Then you have to go to the website and sign-up for the service. Then you have to fill out some on-screen forms on the TV and pick a dial-up number. It then downloads its software and your local cable TV schedule. Then it apparently initializes a bunch of stuff, because you can't record anything for eight hours. Compared to, say, setting up a printer, it's fairly complicated, but it's done in such a way that anyone (and believe me, when it comes to this stuff, I am anyone) can do it.

One thing that is impressive is the consistency of tone throughout the documentation and on-screen: light, playful, simple. Very branded, but not in an obnoxious way.

The Program Guide aspect of Tivo is very well done--it puts the ugly, hackneyed Comcast one to shame. At a glance, you can see several hours of what is on a particular channel, plus the show listing. To do that on the Comcast system, you'd have to flip through about 20 screens. Here, it is on one.

Another example of its good design came while watching Angels in America this weekend. It's six hours long, and, since I had recorded it, I stopped in the middle of it to watch the second half the next night. I had no idea how I was going to find my place in the movie again when I went back to it, but when I called it up, the first option to click on was "Continue Viewing." Nicely done.

The "Season Pass" feature, which allows you to record every first-run episode of any show is pretty damn cool too, although apparently if the network doesn't designate things as first-run, Tivo gets confused. The Daily Show airs several times a day, but only the episode at 11 pm is the new one, but Tivo doesn't seem to know this. When I went to set up a season pass for The Daily Show, it added EVERY Daily Show episode: like four a day. So I had to unsubscribe to that, unfortunately.

Tivo's main flaw, however, is that it can't record while you're watching something else (not easily anyway) and that it can't record multiple things at once. This causes all sorts of priority rules and workarounds that I'm certain some poor interaction designer had to come up with. Tivo would be twice as useful (and more usable) with this feature added in. (Easier said than done, I'm sure.)

Tivo also builds (and records for you) shows that it thinks you'll like. I'm not sure what the formulas are for choosing these, or how long it takes to get accurate recommendations, but so far, in the five days I've been using it, it's guessed wrong every time. Sometimes way wrong. But it could still be learning our viewing habits.

All in all, I think it's a pretty solid digital appliance, one of the few really well-executed ones I've played with in a while.

Posted at 12:38 AM | comments (1) | trackback (0)