“Content Finding Navigation” Content-Centric User Interface

Users can become overwhelmed by the vast amounts of visual contents available from various sources including digital terrestrial and satellite broadcasting, IP TV, and much more. Toshiba has developed a content-centric user interface called “Content Finding Navigation” that allows the user to swiftly discover the types of content corresponding to his or her interests in this ocean of visual contents. In order to offer seamless access to diverse types of broadcast media content, Content Finding Navigation provides a unified graphical user interface (GUI) based on relevance ratios among types of content. The relevance ratios of diverse types of content are calculated based on attributes such as titles, casts, categories, and other topic keywords.

Diverse types of media content are arranged in a threedimensional (3D) space based on their relevance ratios, as shown in the upper figure. The distance between the user-selected center content and the other types of content corresponds to the strength of the relevance ratio. The direction between the user-selected center content and the other types of content represents reasoning attributes such as titles, people, genres, and other topic keywords. For example, content that is relevant to a cast member rather than other attributes is located in the direction of “Person.”

This swift guidance interface based on the relevance ratios among types of content allows faster and easier access to the types of target content of interest. Furthermore, the user can discover types of content with the same cast or the same title that are scheduled to be rebroadcast. We intend to apply Content Finding Navigation to PCs and TVs as a unified GUI to support users’ discovery of targeted contents.

Screen image of Content Finding Navigation

Concept of content-centric user interface