Exploring Social TV

In this user study, we explored the application concept of Social TV, which aims at providing remote users with a joint TV experience. 15 pairs of friends watched TV in 2 separate rooms, using a social TV application. We found that the majority of the test users would like to use a social TV application in the future, especially for sporting events and TV shows. In our study we compared 3 different situations of jointly watching TV: a) remotely, using graphic symbols (e.g. emoticons), b) remotely, using voice chat, and, as a control group, c) watching TV while co-located. Both the joint TV watching experience and social presence was significantly lower for the graphic symbols condition than for the other conditions. Interestingly, neither the subjects' characterisation nor their behaviour differed significantly between the remote audio chat and the face-to-face condition. Empirical design guidance for audio chat and graphic symbols communication in the context of Social TV is presented.