Ajax Intervention: Tivo.com online scheduling

Brian Dillard, Monday, October 15, 2007 @ 2:18 pm

Welcome to Ajax Intervention, in which we dissect how major websites misuse, or fail to use, Ajax to improve their user experience.

Up this time: Tivo's My Tivo online scheduling tool, which could use an emergency Ajax intervention.

As much as I love my Tivo digital video recorder, it's no fun to schedule recordings on a television screen with a remote-control joystick and a virtual keyboard. But thanks to a wireless card and the online My Tivo service, I can schedule a program from any web browser as little as an hour before it's set to air. The service was originally billed as a tool for last-minute scheduling when you're away from home, but I use it even when I'm sitting in the same room as my DVR. Web interfaces are just easier than Tivo's on-screen menus.

That said, the My Tivo interface could use an update. Given the small number of ads that appear on the site - most of them 120x120 buttons with shallow inventory - it's hard to imagine Tivo is earning much money from all the extra pages its users are forced to navigate just to schedule a Season Pass of their favorite show. The process goes something like this:

• Visit the "Online Scheduling" page in My Tivo.
• Enter a program in the search box.
• Receive a results page.
• Click on a show's title.
• Receive a program details page.
• Click "Get a Season Pass."
• Receive the recording-options page.
• Choose your recording options.
• Receive a confirmation page with no compelling content.

That's a minimum of five full pageloads just to schedule one program, without a bit of Web 2.0 goodness in sight. Sure, there are some DHTML tabs at the bottom of the program details page. But that's about it.

I'm not just talking about the lack of Ajax, either. The Tivo set-top box is all about personalization; based on your ratings of shows you've recorded, it can predict which shows you might like and predictively record these "Tivo Suggestions" for you. But any such personalization is buried in the Tivo web interface, inside a DHTML tab at the bottom of the program details page.

Click it and you'll learn, for instance, that lovers of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" also enjoy "Angel," "Charmed" and "The X-Files." But there's nothing to suggest these canned recommendations are based on my own viewing habits; in fact, I've given "Charmed" the dreaded "three thumbs down" rating on my own Tivo box and it's still showing up here. Why on earth isn't this content specifically targeted to me? If the content were compelling, maybe it wouldn't deserve to be socked away inside a tab.

Now let's imagine how My Tivo might look with an Ajax overhaul and better personalization.

• Visit the "Online Scheduling" page in My Tivo.
• Enter a program in the search box.
• Thanks to Ajax autosuggest, receive an inline list of the most likely matches. Click on the one you want.
• Receive a program details page.
• Click "Get a Season Pass."
• Thanks to the power of Ajax, receive a lightboxed recording-options dialogue and choose your options without leaving the page.
• Within the same lightbox, receive a confirmation message that includes personalized recommendations for additional shows.

By replacing three page refreshes with Ajax calls, we can reduce the process of scheduling a Season Pass down to two pages and, with better data mining on the server side, throw in personalized recommendations, too. If you've noticed that the UI I'm describing is a complete Netflix ripoff, well, duh. Why shouldn't Tivo - the company that invented the DVR market and then watched inferior operators eat away at its market share and profitability - take a page or two from the playbook of the company that's almost single-handedly decimating Blockbuster? Netflix operates like an Internet company, not an entertainment company. Tivo should follow suit.

Sure, Tivo continues to leverage wi-fi, desktop software and content partnerships into an impressive array of services. Its set-top boxes really can function as wireless entertainment hubs. But Tivo behaves, fundamentally, like a moribund hardware maker. It treats its web offerings like inferior adjuncts to the set-top experience, thereby neglecting a powerful means of product differentiation. And really, with the entire country laying odds on how long you'll stay afloat, shouldn't you pursue every possible avenue to improve your product?

Crappy cable-provider DVRs lack Tivo's intuitive UI and powerful wireless integration, but they're in a lot of homes thanks to competitive pricing and the marketing muscle of Comcast, et al. Meanwhile, true geeks can roll their own DVRs using commodity PC hardware and open-source software. Tivo's best hope for the future involves beating the cable companies on features and beating the DIY crowd on ease of use. A solid web UI would be a nice step in that direction.

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   ajaxflakes - Read all about the latest developments on web design 2.0 and ajax + lots of tips. TOP 100+ best Free Opensource Software for windows XP and Vista. Thought i should add it might be helpful to others… http://ajaxflakes.com

   Comment by jest staffel, Saturday, October 27, 2007 @ 7:53 pm

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