A User Interface Design for a Video-on-demand Service Trial in an Educational Setting

Video-on-demand (VOD) is one of a series of emerging interactive broadband services. VOD provides users with the capability to access a vast variety of interactive programmes on demand, and give them full VCR-like control over their programme selections. This paper presents and describes a user interface that was designed for a business VOD service trial operated by Stentor, which began in January 1994, at two universities in Ottawa, Canada. It describes the service architecture and trial setting, as well as presents some trial results. Finally, some recommendations based on these results, and future enhancements to the VOD user interface, are described.