Introducing Sharemote: A Tangible Interface for Collaborative TV Control

The TV is among the most favored devices to consume media together with others in shared living spaces. Yet, the interaction with a TV is still limited to one user. This likely causes frustration or leads to long decision-making processes which in turn can reduce belongingness and affiliation with one another and impact the overall TV-watching experience negatively. To overcome this, we investigate opportunities in designing tangible interfaces to support collaborative movie selection among co-located users. Therefore, we present Sharemote - a concept that provides physical genre-based tokens to explore group interests and to narrow down possible movies to select. We evaluated the effect of Sharemote on perceived social interaction in terms of social connectedness, team performance, and co-experience through a controlled mixed-subject lab experiment in groups of three (N = 30). Results show that providing genre-based tokens significantly promotes the overall user experience of jointly selecting a movie and is the users’ preferred choice. Although Sharemote doesn’t lead to a measurable increase in social connectedness and team performance compared to the current standard in homes using a single remote, it supports the investigation of shared interests and thus helps to select a movie everyone enjoys watching. With this work, we contribute toward the design of a novel entertainment experience and discuss the value of tangibles to promote collaborative movie selection.