Present in 94.4% of Brazilian households (71.5 million of them), according to the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) module of the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) carried out in 2022, the TV is much more than a mere household appliance here. Some people consider it a “member of the family”, precisely because it has been omnipresent in their lives since its arrival in the country on September 18, 1950.

Almost 74 years and several developments later, TV, once the dominant form of television, is now experiencing a struggle for viewers' attention with the various devices that have emerged with the emergence of the internet, especially smartphones. And it is precisely within this context that it will undergo its greatest transformation in Brazil.

Encouraged by the Ministry of Communications (MCom) in partnership with the Brazilian Digital Terrestrial Television System Forum (SBTVD Forum) and with support from RNP, the project to create a new generation of television in the country, TV 3.0, is in Phase 3 and is scheduled to be implemented in 2025. And it will not be a simple technological evolution; the changes will revolutionize the relationship between Brazilians and open TV, promoting more interaction and giving viewers almost 100% autonomy.

App-Oriented TV 

Research into the journey of the TV 3.0 viewer, guided by applications, has been investigating everything from the relevant initial settings in a fictitious smart TV environment to browsing through broadcast television content, under a paradigm that has the potential to hide the abstraction of channels and their numbering, to promote total control of content and experiences through broadcaster applications. 

The current inputs are a partial result of a recurring cycle of interface design, development, refinements and extensions, applying design thinking and user-centered computing techniques. The prototype is being developed in HTML5 to run on Raspberry Pi 4 model B hardware with universal remote control.

The model has been used in focus groups, opinion polls and demonstration events to promote debate, validation and publicity, in more detail aiming at: the best possible understanding of the new paradigm; the validation and refinement of the new concepts with common viewers and experts in the field; the evaluation of the performance of an implementation of the paradigm in hardware with limited resources; the identification of friction points and possibilities for harmonization between smart TV and TV 3.0 environments; the identification of new requirements and developments arising from the original AP-6.x requirements of the Call for Proposals TV 3.0; identification of necessary metadata, in addition to other objectives. It is important to emphasize that the objective of this prototyping is not to seek standardization in the design of graphical interfaces. 

Segmented programming application

Segmented programming application

During the research for the development of TV 3.0, the use case of the segmented programming application was discussed, which proposes an approach for the dissemination of (advertising) content using the OTA (Over The Air) and OTT (Over The Top) distribution environments in a way that is imperceptible to the user. The focus was to discuss the identification of the location of a receiver/viewer, demonstrate the presentation of segmented (targeted) advertising, aiming at execution on simple hardware, such as the Raspberry Pi 4 model B. The prototype is being implemented using HTML5 and JavaScript and also NCL.

The debate involved:

1. Example of a broadcaster application following the model demonstrated and defined by the R&D team, with:

• Permissions check: application checks whether the user has allowed access to location data.

• Main Content Broadcast: Start of broadcast, where content from a broadcaster is presented.

• Location API: The application uses the location API to obtain the location property of the receiver and use it to decide which advertisement should be presented.

• Advertising Content Decision: Based on the location permission, the application determines whether the next advertisement to be displayed will be general or local.

• Advertising Display: Depending on the decision, local or general advertising is broadcast, followed by a return to the main content.

Multi-device accessibility 

An accessibility and emergency alert display system was developed, simulating the TV 3.0 environment. The accessibility features include subtitles (captions), audio description, dialogue enhancement and sign language. These can be displayed on both the TV and mobile devices and can also be customized according to the user. Emergency alerts are presented directly on the TV, in text, audio and also in sign language, transmitted from an application that simulates the dispatch of a TV station.

Co-creation in focus

Anticipating these transformations, the Application Coding WG, one of the groups involved in the project supported by RNP, carried out detailed work to pre-identify who the users of the new TV will be and what the journey of these viewers will be like based on the possibilities that will be offered.

The members of the WG, who are researchers from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA), the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), the Federal Fluminense University (UFF) and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), in addition to collaborators from RNP, met in Rio de Janeiro in August 2023, to carry out this mapping in two meetings.

The agile design thinking methodology permeated the entire program and created an environment conducive to debate and collaboration. On the first day, the entire context for the development of the new technology was created, with the delimitation of the digital product at a conceptual and functional level, when the user personas were constructed and the empathy maps for each of them were filled out.

Co-creation in focus

Anticipating these transformations, the Application Coding WG, one of the groups involved in the project supported by RNP, carried out detailed work to pre-identify who the users of the new TV will be and what the journey of these viewers will be like based on the possibilities that will be offered.

The members of the WG, who are researchers from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA), the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), the Federal Fluminense University (UFF) and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), in addition to collaborators from RNP, met in Rio de Janeiro in August 2023, to carry out this mapping in two meetings.

The agile design thinking methodology permeated the entire program and created an environment conducive to debate and collaboration. On the first day, the entire context for the development of the new technology was created, with the delimitation of the digital product at a conceptual and functional level, when the user personas were constructed and the empathy maps for each of them were filled out.

“The application of the design thinking methodology was fundamental not only to ensure a level understanding of the scope of what TV 3.0 would be, but also to promote empathy with the profiles identified to map their possible beliefs, expectations and fears regarding the new technology. Thanks to this user-focused approach, researchers from different areas were able to converge their discussions into credible visual artifacts, helping the WG to benefit from a scenario design that was as realistic as possible to the needs and contexts of use of potential viewers”, says Lisandra Pereira, RNP design thinking consultant responsible for facilitating the workshop.

“The application of the design thinking methodology was fundamental not only to ensure a level understanding of the scope of what TV 3.0 would be, but also to promote empathy with the profiles identified to map their possible beliefs, expectations and fears regarding the new technology. Thanks to this user-focused approach, researchers from different areas were able to converge their discussions into credible visual artifacts, helping the WG to benefit from a scenario design that was as realistic as possible to the needs and contexts of use of potential viewers”, says Lisandra Pereira, RNP design thinking consultant responsible for facilitating the workshop.

The co-creation between researchers, divided into groups, resulted in four profiles of TV 3.0 viewers:

• The elderly viewer, who is more resistant to change, because they are already very accustomed to the way they interact with their home appliance and is afraid of not being able to keep up with new technologies.

• The teenage viewer who sees the TV as just another screen. Since they have no difficulty using new technologies, their main concern is the content.

• The child viewer who has no choice in the open channels.

• The young adult with visual impairment who considers TV important for information, social integration and entertainment. They need, above all, accessible content and systems so that they can gain autonomy.

On the second day of the workshop, it was the WG's turn to design the basic journeys of the prioritized personas. In this activity, the groups of researchers, together, defined the stages, actors, actions and points of contact of each journey, complementing them with risks and pains to which the personas are exposed when using TV 3.0.

“These meetings are very important because they encourage discussion with different points of view on this important requirement for TV 3.0, which is a paradigm shift from what we know today as TV channels, and will now be application-oriented. We have assembled a very heterogeneous team with computing and social communication, and now we have the support of RNP, bringing this design thinking methodology, which makes us question whether the path is right and what difficulties TV users will face with this new approach. Only then will we arrive at a result that has the greatest possible chance of being adopted and meeting the needs of the different types of viewers we have. This type of discussion in the R&D process is essential, as it allows us to delve deeper into the real problems that people will have when faced with this new technology and way of watching TV”, assessed the coordinator of the Application Coding WG and professor at UFJF, Marcelo Moreno.

Results

The result of this work, carried out in July 2023, was the formulation of a large set of prototypes that were presented to different focus groups – which were recruited also considering the personas developed in the co-creation activity – allowing an assessment of viewers' perception of these changes and the confirmation of the hypotheses raised. After several rounds of construction, the team evolved into a design prototype, also incorporating the tested usability solutions and which are now being demonstrated at Digital TV events and which can be seen in the gallery below.

Another point to highlight was the opportunity to use the federal government's single login, the gov.br identity, as one of the ways of identifying viewers using the television set, in order to allow better use of the technologies developed to also support the delivery of dozens of digital services available and with context.

Finally, a final development of the researchers' work outside the scope of the project was the identification of the opportunity to develop a single application to manage viewer data that would allow the automatic configuration of new devices and the continued use of personalization resources on any device, including in guest mode, as well as with other applications on connected televisions.