This is a picture of a late night broadcast of SportsCenter during playback through my DVR. What’s interesting to me is the column of topics along the right edge of the screen. The current story is the highlighted topic at the top of the column. As the story finishes, the list scrolls up and the next topic moves into the highlight and sits at the top.

When watching in real time, this is useful by letting me know what’s coming up in the broadcast. But the real value is when I’m watching from a recording. For me, SportsCenter is the perfect candidate for recorded viewing. In an hour broadcast, there’s probably only about 15 minutes worth of content that I’m truly interested in. And that’s why this list of topics of so useful. I’m able to fast forward to exactly what interests me in a very easy way. I don’t need to guess what the story is about by watching the picture on the screen - I can simply look at the topics as they scroll up.

This is a case where the UI is embedded in the content with a usefulness that is maximized through DVR usage. Brilliant. I don’t know if this was the intentional design (if anybody knows, please let me know) or if it’s a wonderful side-effect of putting a topic list along the side, but the value it adds to the way in which I watch SportsCenter is significant. 

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 2:30 pm and is filed under UX. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.