A few days after posting “Wii optimized web sites“, I’ve been contacted to sketch out a proof of concept to port a very popular service to the Nintendo Wii.

I have some experience in TV interfaces, here are my basic recomandations to build a nice user experience on TV:

Response: UI must be extremely responsive. With a Wii it’s quite easy because it has the necessary horsepower for animation and effects. The back-end has to be responsive too.

Contextualization: because TV screen surface (in square pixels) is tiny. Because scrolling pages is always to be avoided on TV. Because the Wiimote doesn’t allow to point small items without going wild, the only way to fill the screen with relevant content is to contextualize.

1. Contextualize the service: after a shoulder-ruining Wii game, maybe people will use your web service in a way you could guess. For example, players will order a pizza to take a break, but they probably won’t read a NY Times article. You can help your users by guessing what they will need from you while playing… and put the rest behind a “more…” button.
2. Contextualize the actions: to fully exploit screen real estate, slice actions in steps with a sense of hierarchy. To avoid frustration make sure that any step can be taken without validation, and that user can go back without feeling he’s done something “bad”.

Transitions: give a sense of time to your user, always remember the narrative essence of user experience. Transitions are perfect to give a sens of “going deeper”, or “going further”, or “going back”, etc. Don’t spoil too much real estate with breadcrumbs, instead take your user by the hand and make sure he always knows where home is.

These are preliminary thought about Wii optimized UI, there will be more.