Content Colors in the Guide
We do a great deal of consumer-based product research and product usability testing. The interaction between our customers and our products is a challenging relationship to understand: what may be intuitive to one person may be completely foreign to another.
We have invested, and we continue to invest, greatly in trying to understand our customer’s video interests in an effort to make regular improvements to our products. Our research involves placing our new product prototypes in the hands of consumers to understand likes, dislikes, and general usability. When I review the results, or sit in on usability testing, I learn a great deal about the typical user’s behavior. It can be a humbling experience. Features and functions that we may have assumed were natural and intuitive turn out not to be.
One that struck me recently was how many users did not understand that the on-screen guide for our digital cable TV product has a color coding scheme. Just in case you didn’t know, the colors that appear in the guide are linked to the content category, like so:
- Regular TV programming = Blue
- Sports = Green
- Movies = Purple
- Kids = Light Blue
I’m curious. Did you know this, and do you find it useful?
BTW… take a look at Comcast.net. We use the same color coding in the on-line TV Listings on our Web portal as well.
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Comments (2)
Yes, I get the color scheme. But I don't often use the online guide. After spending all day at the computer I foolishly try to use the horrible Comcast guide on the TV, which is one of the worst designed things I've ever had the misfortune to attempt to use. It wastes space, includes ads, and is terrible to navigate. Worst of all is the OnDemand section, where finding things is an exercise in complete frustration. For which I'm paying far too much (can't say exactly because of the impenetrable Comcast package bundling tricks). I'm a weekend afternoon away from dumping cable altogether and just using my 55" plasma as a computer monitor.
on my tv there is a gray
like one of the programs is gray
what does that mean