Comcast: Worst UI Design Ever?

Just as working as a reporter ruined reading less-than perfect prose, so too has working as a User Interface designer for a few months thrashed my everyday interaction with almost all screen-based devices. If you ever find yourself behind a man or a woman at an ATM, a Self-Checkout line or a movie ticket kiosk who is methodically pushing the touch screen buttons very slowly, checking the "down" state and then muttering about "action on the release," you know you've found a UI designer.

I've really started to notice just how terrible Comcast's user experience is for its on-screen guides.  Contrasted with TIVO it looks clunky, and contrasted with Wii and Apple menus it looks prehistoric. This formatting has not changed much since the TV guide channel first appeared on my parent's TCI back in the '90s. To boot, the Comcast-issued HD DVR displays nice, big Ads on the on screen guide (funny, because I wanted the DVR to AVOID ads) and has totally crippled input ports for nearly every medium and format save coaxial.

I have some big questions for those honchos sucking down dollars in return for a relatively crappy experience:

Blue, purple, yellow, and green - really? First graders know how to match colors better than this.
If Comcast purports to be *the* HD source how is it that their guide won't expand out into widescreen?
Why does Comcast make us rent/buy expensive and nice DVR boxes if they're going to cripple them and make them less responsive?
Who thought it was a good idea to place ads on an already cluttered guide screen (fire that idiot)?

A really nice trick for you widescreen viewers: change your color scheme to "Onyx." It may not fill the whole screen, but the black background will certainly improve the effect. 




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