» Horrible Interface Design, Found in Over 20 Million US Homes

Maybe like me, you are forced to live with a Comcast digital receiver box or digital video recorder. According to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, Comcast currently is the largest US cable provider with roughly 24,156,000 subscribers. With this large of a user base Comcast has a responsibility to offer a streamlined and efficient user experience if they hope to keep customers happily using their services. Luckily for them, I cannot choose another cable provider or I already would have, damn oligopolies! This lack of competition is exactly why I think that Comcast has done nothing to make the user experience on its DVR boxes more enjoyable.

As an experienced DVR user and self proclaimed gadget freak I find it amazing that this thing was not questioned prior to being released to the public. Well I guess it most likely was discussed in depth by a committee of so called experts and this is the result. Only a process as stupid as design by committee could result in this outcome.

Bad Interface Design at its Worst

As you can see there is a huge advertisement located at the bottom of the guide, which wouldn’t be such an annoyance if it wasn’t for the fact that every time you scroll past the last entry the cursor jumps to the ad. While some people may say that you should page up or down to move quickly between pages, I prefer to browse the descriptions as well. In my mind selecting an ad should be an active process initiated by the user. The forced acknowledgement of these ads not only makes me less inclined to visit them, it has me seeking out ways to avoid them all together. Good interface design makes navigating large amounts of information both manageable and quick. These obviously were not the goals of the people responsible for making this decision. Designers make decisions all day long however losing sight of the user in the decision making process is what leads to these types of solutions.

If you have Comcast have you noticed this as well? I would love to hear what other designers think about this.

03/22

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11 Responses to “Horrible Interface Design, Found in Over 20 Million US Homes”

omar j
March 23rd, 2008 at 2:08 pm

Yes! Glad I’m not the only one who noticed and is annoyed by it.
Zinni
March 23rd, 2008 at 3:24 pm

Omar, Thanks for the reassurance! I thought I was crazy for a little bit.
Paul
March 23rd, 2008 at 5:13 pm

“Better than TiVo”. That’s what satellite and cable companies tell you today… because they save money when they don’t provide you a TiVo receiver. And I can still remember the directv technician at my house telling me this - at the time I didn’t really get what is supposed to be better, but it is getting better slowly. But I still miss the TiVo sounds.
David Sparks
March 23rd, 2008 at 6:22 pm

Screw Comcast. If they cared anything about keeping their customers happy they wouldn’t be leading the charge in anti net neutrality campaign. Actually probably starting the whole debate by blocking torrent sites. The net should stay the way it is. Free to do what you want at your own risk. I don’t need a corporation imposing their moral high ground or will on me, I can make my own decisions. Furthermore it’s only the first step in a long battle that will come one day from some people who want to keep information from the public.

It benefits a few to keep the many uninformed.

Sorry for the political styled rant. I just hate Comcast and their my ISP.
Zinni
March 23rd, 2008 at 6:29 pm

David, I did not want to get into the net neutrality topic, but I agree 100% that it is a bunch of bullshit. Comcast is in now way consumer focused and that it very easy to see.
Bill
March 24th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

That was the only problem you found with the Comcast DVR?! It barely lasted a week in my home. It was an end-to-end awful user experience. I’ve used both Windows Media Center and Tivo for years and am quite satisfied with both. Typical Comcast.
Zinni
March 24th, 2008 at 5:37 pm

Bill,

It was definitely not the only problem that I have found with the device. It was however the most annoying and obvious in my opinion. Everything about the device is confusing. I feel like I have been dropped off in the middle of a maze with no end, when I am browsing the on demand content…
J
March 24th, 2008 at 6:48 pm

i live in NYC, and have to suffer through Time Warner Cable’s lackluster DVR experience. The company recently deployed a newset of set-top boxes, replacing the old, adequate ones. The old ones were not great, but they served their purpose. The new boxes are unbearable. UI is bad. Searching for titles has become “less intuitive” from the last model, lacking specific search features (who removed features?!) and the remote control forces the user to select the “CBL” button prior to making any remote action affecting the cable box. I won’t even get started on the frequency in which the box resets.

Thinking that maybe my wife is right, and i am just a finicky pain in the ass… I asked Time Warner is others were complaining. Believe it or not, I got an honest employee to admit that she receives an “unimaginable” amount of people calling and “begging” for the old boxes back.

Too bad the company uses some bullshit FCC excuse, and won’t allow us to have our old boxes back. Those in NYC who have yet to upgrade boxes, and have heard the horror stories of the new batch, hold tightly onto their cherished oldies.

F Time Warner Cable. What can’t more companies maybe products that work the way they are supposed to.
Zinni
March 24th, 2008 at 7:00 pm

J, unfortunately software development is a hard thing to get right. I think without a different way of thinking similar to 37signals, we may never see a huge conglomerate like Time Warner and Comcast develop something that is actually usable.I hope that they see that people are unhappy with what they are offering and outsource their software development for their DVR boxes to a company that can see this, or someone new enters the market and blows them all away (unlikely though due to the barriers to entry )
SubOne
March 31st, 2008 at 11:56 pm

What about the fact that it takes 10 or so boxes to go through (and having to take each one back) before finding a DVR with a hard drive that isn’t jacked up. Nothing makes me more angry with the comcast dvr than when I come home to see 2 pages worth of StarGate or some other show I watch a lot and the moment I sit down to watch them I find that they all have large gaps in them where the sound fails or the picture is corrupt. Sometimes it’s so bad that the box won’t even respond and you have to turn it off and back on and delete the recording before you accidentally click it and lock up your system again. I realize that this is more of a technical issue than a design issue, but in reality even the technical issues can be the first thing to give me a bad _experience_.

Also, how about the fast forward/rewind/play/pause buttons in the On Demand? Why are they so non-responsive? Is it too much to ask to cache some of the video so that when I hit a button it does it right away instead of hesitating. That is assuming it is an issue with slow communication, but I’m not certain it’s not just a bug.

And one thing that really bothers me (and I’m sure is done perfectly purposeful) is how they shove all the channels that you don’t have down your throat. Am I the only one that thinks that if I didn’t order the 200 or so premium channels and sports channels and PPV channels that I really give a damn what’s on those channels? Why do I want search results that I cannot trim to the channels that I subscribe to. And for that matter why must I scroll through a batch of channels that I didn’t order or have to weed through the areas that are intermingled between things I ordered and not ordered. Some have suggested that I utilize the favorite’s feature of the box/remote, but this is 1) fixing something that shouldn’t be broke in the first place 2) doesn’t really fix the issue, now my channel only goes in one direction (up) if I hit the favorite button (unless I only have like 8 favorite channels).

Don’t get me wrong I think that the people at Comcast, at least for me, have been great. They always friendly, prompt (By prompt I mean coming out in a day or two, not showing up on time), and eager to help in any way, even in the financial department. I just think that they are given little resources as far as design and some of the bug fixes because the “higher ups” WANT you to be bugged by that advert, because they don’t see it as being bugged, they see it as getting your attention. They see bug fixes lower priority than better technology. They see people looking at channels they don’t have and calling and ordering them because they see good movies or something. They see profit margins.

Anyway that’s just my opinion and I’m no expert.