The Exploration and Design of Social TVs for Use in Hotel Supporting social experience of hotel guests through TV and mobile devices

Abstract

Social TV is connecting non-collocated TV viewers via information technology, allowing remote viewers to interact with each other via the television set and personal devices. This thesis aimed to explore the social needs for leisure hotel guests and design social experience for them through the usage of TV and personal devices. The whole thesis work was mainly driven by the question “how can integrate personal devices with hotel TV in ways that support interpersonal interaction for unacquainted hotel guests”. During the process, Human Centered Design was adopted to develop the work from divergence, transformation to convergence. In each section, a number of relevant methods were used to elicit guests’ social needs, generating and evaluating various concepts. In the end, the final concepts that were developed served as examples of social TV possibilities in the context of the hotel. Except concepts that were exemplified, a set of social TV design guidelines were identified and summarized as an important part of the research outcome, inspiring and supporting people who work around the social TV field.