Combining our insights from the research and prototyping stages, we present: AdaptiveWatch - a future-focused TV-viewing experience we envision would be integrated as a toggle-able feature across all TV streaming platforms.
AdaptiveWatch utilizes user-purchased sensors, such as smartwatches, cameras, and smart-speakers to extract user’s emotion, attention, and personal viewing habits. Using that information, it will leverage Deep Learning models to synthetically adapt the TV content in real time based on the user’s context, thereby seamlessly and dynamically adjusting the TV content to meet the user’s emotional, cognitive, and personal viewing needs. AdaptiveWatch uses real-time stylistic changes to the plot-line, weather, music, and color grading to adapt the content according to the user's emotional and personal viewing preferences to enhance the TV viewing experience.
For our high-fidelity prototype of the AdaptiveWatch experience, we put a spin on the classic European fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. The narrative that we all know - a young girl who goes to visit her grandmother in the wood, a wolf follows her and eats Little Red and her grandmother, and a hunter rescues them. This is the base narrative that we used as the foundation of our prototype’s plotline. Along with the base narrative, we created three other narratives with themes of sadness, horror, and comedy (respectively) in order to simulate an on-the-fly plot adaptation based on users’ emotional inputs.
Aside from the plot-line adaption, we also incorporated stylistic changes - including weather, background music, and color grading - to put the variables to the test and determine which change(s) users prefer to experience during their viewing session.
Streaming Platform Integration
While the goal for context-aware content is to have the narrative adapting automatically based on the user's emotional responses, we learned from early prototyping that users have mixed emotions about the automated viewing experiences. It's an experience they want to choose to have, not expect.
Integration into existing streaming platforms and the ability to toggle the feature on and off is imperative. AdaptiveWatch is a feature, a supplement, a way to enhance your viewing, but it's not the rule.
.gif)
