When a new technology – such as interactive digital television – is introduced to a wider audience, ease of use is often critical to success. By focusing on these usability issues with the aim of supporting user acceptance for interactive TV, Tibor Kunert provides clear guidelines for designing the user interfaces on interactive TV applications.

This guidance is presented in the form of design patterns, and a new approach is proposed that helps designers and developers to explore design alternatives and to evaluate the trade-offs that need to be made in order to maximise usability.

The 42 design patterns containing 185 guidelines provide comprehensive and empirically-validated guidance for designing interactive TV user interfaces. A pattern language is developed which can be used for designing specific applications, for enduring usability, and for defining corporate style guidelines and developing application templates that help streamline the process of production.