With the growth in the number of users for smart televisions, streaming sticks, and set-top boxes, businesses are actively participating to enhance their brand experience to the bigger screen. However, the shift from a mobile or desktop interface to a wide screen is full of challenges.
Many companies attempting to connect new experiences to old infrastructure with the help of a legacy system modernization company, help you discover what works smoothly on a small screen can fail on a large one.
According to a report by Statista, the count of Smart TV users is believed to go beyond 1.6 billion by 2027. This describes a huge and engaged audience, but with the high expectations for quality. They are designed to serve polished experiences from giants like Netflix and Disney+.
To match such standards, businesses must explore the best smart TV app development practices that prioritise intuitive navigation, strong performance, and immersive design. To get a wide reach like these big smart TV giants, designing avant-garde user experience requires a fundamental rethinking of interaction, navigation, and visual hierarchy.
Common Mistakes That Leads to Failure of TV Apps
Failure to easily change can cause damaged user experiences, high bounce rates, and a failed investment. Let’s check out the most common pitfalls that damage the presence of big-screen apps and how you can avoid them.
Ignoring User Interface
The elementary mistake is designing the app for a user who is sitting several inches away from the screen. This error is seen in two critical ways:
- Using text too small: Body text readable on a phone won’t be clear, creating a straining mess on a TV. Font sizes need to be significantly larger. Always test your app design on a monitor screen from across the room; and if you feel complications in viewing the content, the text is too small.
- Touch-Centric Design: The primary input in a smart television is not a touchscreen but a remote control. Interfaces working on taps, swipes, or multi-touch gestures are unusable. The design of your TV should be clear and provide linear navigation using directional pads and select buttons.
Overwhelming Layouts
A big screen never states that your app should fill every corner with content. Mobile apps have dense and information-rich layouts to allow users to easily scroll and tap with precision. On the other hand, a TV with a cluttered UI is nothing but a navigational nightmare.
The key to win the audience is to embrace negative space and create an app that has a clear visual hierarchy with viewable and well-spaced tiles that are easy to target.
Avoiding Navigation Simplicity
Complex and multi-level menus might lead your users to lose interest. Mobile devices use a hamburger menu while a TV includes hiding key navigation options. Users should understand how to reach out to primary functions like Home, Search, or Settings without getting lost in the sub-menus.
Forgetting Load Times
Television operating systems are often integrated with less processing power than today’s smartphones. Many TV apps are designed as web applications, failing to perform as expected if not optimized correctly. Optimizing performance with activities, such as image compression, slow loading content, and simplifying animations is very well required.
Poor Handling of Video Playback
- Forcing a user to watch a logo animation whenever the app is launched.
- Actions like play/pause, rewind, and fast-forward functions must be reliable.
- Not displaying title, episode, time elapsed, and remaining time clearly.
No Real-World Testing
Testing your app on your development monitor via the emulator is not enough. Test the apps on actual TVs. Colors theme and dimensions can look different across different TV brands (Samsung vs. LG vs. Sony). Refresh rates and processing time can influence the animations. There is no replacement to quality assurance testing on real devices within a real setup.
Conclusion
Avoiding the pitfalls mentioned in this article will help you get a progressive and the best smart TV app development. The top TV apps are intuitive and responsive. Developing such an engaging television app requires an experienced TV app development partner with the expertise and a clear understanding of this unique ecosystem.
Even AI Consulting Services can leverage similar specialised expertise when building patient-centric apps for connected devices.
TV app development means having support of experts specialized in this field. They have the experience to assist you with the platform-specific requirements to deliver optimized performance, and intuitive navigation patterns. They will help you to build an app not just for functionality, but for the cinematic experience that users can enjoy on their largest screen.
