A group of Ball State University students are working on a project expected to change the way people watch TV.
Jennifer Palilonis, assistant professor of journalism, said Ball State is in its third year of working on developing an interface that will let viewers interact with advertisements, graphics, poll questions and other things related to TV news broadcasts.
She said iTV is a special topics course with four professors who chose students with advanced skills. This semester's class has 35 students from four majors, three departments and two colleges, she said.
"This is a great project for collaboration," she said. "They may work for years as a professional before they get to collaborate at this level."
During the first two years of the project, the students focused on making interactive news broadcasts, she said. With the TV remote, she said, viewers could look up weather conditions from any zip code; answer and receive results to poll questions about issues in the stories; stop, fast forward and rewind a news ticker and interact with graphics related to the news story.
The interface also allowed viewers to customize a calendar and news on sports teams and stock quotes.
This year, the class used the interface from last year and added several features.
The class is using "research informed design" to model the interface. Multiple focus groups of about 10 people give feedback on the design, functionality and user friendliness, she said. It will make changes based on suggestions from participants in the focus groups.
Palilonis said she hopes the size of the focus groups grow to hundreds so students can gather more empirical results.
It is also adapting the program to small screens for hand-held media devices such as the iPhone.
Also new to the project this year is the advertisement aspect.
Mike Hanely, assistant professor of journalism, said he is the faculty advisor for the five-student advertising team.
The team is taking traditional advertisements and making them interactive, he said. With iTV, people will be able to choose what information they want to get from an advertisement.
The advertising team is working with Toyota of Muncie, Scotty's Brewhouse and G and M Flower Shoppe on the project, he said.
Senior advertising major Michael Metcalf said the interface will allow viewers to choose which car they want to hear about from Toyota or look at an interactive menu from Scotty's. The class hopes to develop an ordering system for Scotty's on the interface, he said.
"This is one of those moments when you realize how great of a university Ball State really is," he said. "You're put in a situation where instead of reading about emerging media, you get to utilize emerging media."
Hanley said the project is a good way for students to gain experience with the type of projects they will be doing after they graduate and find jobs.
"What they are seeing is what happens in the real world," Vinayak Tanksale, instructor of computer science, said. "They get used to working as is expected of them in the real world."
Palilonis said the project will continue with new students in future semesters.
No plans have been made to market a final product, she said, but those involved in the project continually talk about it being a possibility. She said a final product has the potential to be sold but it has no target audience or means to be sold right now.
Tanksale said using this program as it is now requires a special box that hooks up to a TV and a computer. The cable hook up runs through the computer and using Windows Media Center, the TV becomes interactive.
Palilonis said interactive TV is more popular and more polished in the United Kingdom. The concept is relatively new to much of the U.S., she said.
"Not many people are doing what we're doing, and no universities are doing what we're doing," she said.
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