Ten Foot UI: A New Design Paradigm

One of our clients, NextBit Computing Pvt Ltd, wanted an interface for Outreach, a Set Top Box which you can connect to a TV or a large screen capable of uniting all the services like music, video, remote PC, pictures, YouTube, Web Browser, and other applications together in a robust yet intuitive way. We realized this project as a case of Ten-Foot UI, which means that the GUI interface elements like menus, buttons, text fonts etc., have to be large enough to be viewed from a distance of approximately ten feet.

The design of a ten-foot UI is somewhat different from a two-foot UI (web UI), which had to be kept in mind while doing this project. Some important tips for designing ten-foot UI can be listed as under.

• All the graphic elements like buttons, icons, font sizes, headings etc., should be big enough to be visible from a distance of about ten feet, which is the basic meaning of this type of UI. Regardless of the type of video output device, the clarity in readability from this distance needs to be assured.
• Buttons should look snazzy and bold. Navigation and flow through the screens and applications should be easy and intuitive to users.
• Certain amount of transparency should be present on different layers so that the element present below it does not go away completely from the eyes at any point of time.
• Lines should not be single-pixel thick nor should static UI elements with single pixel detail be used, since older televisions may not display such fine details and content might flicker if running on an interlaced display mode.
• To avoid distractions to the viewer and to enhance the clarity of display, care should be taken to keep the design simple, with inclusion of only the core buttons which are required.