The 10 Essentials Of Making a Great Boxee Box App

Yesterday Stage Two blogged about Google TV and how developers can best deliver quality interactive content to the living room. Today we continue that theme by examining potential best practices for developing a killer Boxee Box by D-Link App (full disclosure: Stage Two has a professional relationship with Boxee/D-Link). Our goal is to help developers deliver exceptional content that performs flawlessly in the home theater setting, and when it comes to the Boxee Box, the rules are slightly different than they are for the Boxee app on a PC.  This post is to help developers see some of the different nuances involved as the Boxee Box has a remote (no mouse), no PC involve, and will likely be used in a different manner than the computer-based version. Google has a great list of guidelines for smarTV developers and we think all “ten foot experience” developers should embrace their suggestions as a jumping off point.  We’re adding beyond that, hope these help.

10 – Avoid Input Fields At All Costs

The Boxee Box comes with a clever remote that includes a full QWERTY keyboard on its reverse. That is awesome. Scratch that, it’s super-awesome. Hopefully you only use it when you should – specifically when you are searching for something, logging into something, or some other highly meaningful purpose. Content for the interactive television is not the same as content for a computer or mobile device. Smart couch surfing should feel like analogue couch surfing- not in the content delivered, but in the manner in which it is accessed. If your App asks the user to “type” every 2 minutes, you might as well be thinking of a computer experience, not a TV one.

9 – Create Consistent Remote Interaction

Even though Boxee’s glorious 2-sided remote is…well, glorious, do not build your App in such a way that the user is asked to use the front, then the back, then the front again, now flip it just once more…ok, now watch your TV. We got tired just writing that, so don’t ask a user to do it.  Design interactions that are conscientious of how the user will interact, and make it as congruous as possible with the way they are holding that remote.

8 – There is no Back Button

Boxee’s remote operates (primarily) via directional arrows, a menu key and a play/pause button. From the start, developers should anticipate that users will use the left arrow as the back button (like TiVo and other similar devices work). Users may also expect that “menu” will bring them back to the main screen of your App, which is not correct. Instead, the menu key will bring up the Boxee quick interchange menu. Make sure that the navigation of your App is intuitive and well defined.

7 – Make it Move!

As we wrote in our post yesterday, motion is critical to the TV App experience. Making backgrounds that shimmy and shake will engage and retain users. Playstation 3 has an elegant and dynamic menu background that keeps users entertained.

6 – Redirect for Account Creation

If your app requires a login, give the user two options: either they can sign up via the laptop next to them or they can enter their account information right on-screen. Too many current Boxee apps direct the user to a web address to create an account, which works fine when Boxee is installed on your laptop, but much less so in the living room. While we assume that the average Boxee user has other internet enabled devices near them, it still is a frustration to HAVE to go grab your laptop or iPad to start using an app on your television.  Don’t believe us?  We’ll summarize with this way of crystalizing the point, ask yourself this question: “do you believe you will get more or less signups by telling the user to drop their remote, pick up their laptop, enter in some info, confirm via email, go back to the website, then return to their TV experience?”  Yeah, we agree.

5 – Include a “Sit Back and Watch” Mode

Remember that this is TV we’re talking about so computer rules do not apply. Even if you App is text heavy and social, you should consider including some kind of a “chill out and watch” mode. Tumblr has incorporated a passive consumption mode for both pictures and music with great results. Redux (another Stage Two client, for the record – but it’s super-relevant so we included it here) is another good example of proper execution in this vein.

4 – Your Boxee Box App CANNOT Be “Your Website Only Way Bigger”

Just because it’s a 50″ screen doesn’t mean people are sitting a foot away from it. Furthermore, websites are meant for a specific type of “lean forward” interaction, and even the Boxee remote in the living room doesn’t change that. Design your features accordingly.  Yep, we said this yesterday too, but it’s just so important to consider that we brought it back around again.

3 – Keep Your Menus Visible When Needed!

Don’t hide menus until the user is watching content, period. Many current Boxee apps have a slick interface similar to Boxee’s that hides the menu in a tray that can be reached by mousing over a portion of the screen. But wait a sec, there’s no mouse to move around anymore!

For a specific suggestion: The user should be able to use the left arrow on the remote to pull the last nav menu back up, but not lose what they are currently watching. When you expose a menu, make sure the content the user was watching is still active and easily visible/reachable.  You can riff off this theme as much as you want, but if your users can’t figure out how to control the features, they’ll soon leave it behind.

2 – Your App Needs a Social Life

When a user “loves” something on Boxee, the Boxee universe knows about it. But what about Facebook and Twitter? The Boxee Box experience is designed to include social features from the start.  Developers should give users an easy way to share media preferences across multiple channels in real time. If your app already has a social aspect like comments or user ratings, display this information on-screen during playback (just be sure to give users the ability to turn that element off easily).

The Justin.tv app does a good job of showing users that 300 other people are currently watching exactly what they are. It reinforces this new thing called “social tv” and begs for user interaction. If you let users know that they are not watching in a vacuum, they are more likely to comment, share, and participate.

1 – HD is Pretty

The Boxee Box supports HD, so if your app does as well, make sure you push that HARD. As Mr. Jobs recently said, “users don’t care about amateur hour” (that is, right before announcing YouTube would appear in their box). Most homes that have a Boxee Box will hook it up to a nice, big HD TV. If you have HD content, don’t hide it, promote it as the best way to watch what you’ve got.

We at Stage Two are extremely excited about watching the TV app ecosystem flourish in 2011.  Boxee already has a huge developer base, and we hope they all consider how to make their apps just as engaging on the Boxee Box as they have on Macs and PCs around the world.  Let’s face it, there’s a tiny tiny handful of folks like us who have ever considered true ten-foot experiences, so this is virgin territory for a lot of people.  But for those of us who have the experience, we think it’s important to share, and help see our industry grow and flourish.

Tags: boxee, Boxee Box, consumer electronics, D-Link, Gadgets, Google TV, home theater, internet TV, jeremy toeman, Smart TV, stage two consulting