Bringing the Spirit of the DVR to the Web: TiVo Launches a New tivo.com
Margret Schmidt and Elissa Lee, TiVo

TiVo, often noted for its friendly TV experience, recently launched a new web site designed to bring the same simplicity and ease-of-use to its web presence. It took a close partnership between User Experience and Marketing, the right balance of internal and external design leadership, and a strong internal research team dedicated to continuous feedback in order to make the design a success. Margaret and Elissa will discuss how the project was structured, the research techniques used, and what was learned along the way.

Margret Schmidt is vice president of User Experience Design and Research at TiVo, where she leads the groups responsible for the user interface and user experience of TiVo's TV, PC, Mac, and web products; market, user, and audience research; consumer and technical documentation; and the beta program. Her teams work across all divisions of the company, ensuring a fun, easy-to-use, and consistent TiVo experience for all consumer and service provider TiVo DVRs and tivo.com. Margret has been with TiVo since 2001.

Prior to joining TiVo, Margret created the Usability Engineering group at iPIX. On the road to discovering that design and user experience were her passion, she spent time as an engineering manager, a product manager, and even a real estate broker. Margret holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley. She has a 2006 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Television.

Margret's favorite shows are: Ugly Betty, How I Met Your Mother, and Veronica Mars.

Elissa Lee is senior director of Research and AR&M Product Management. She is responsible for meeting the diverse information needs of many internal groups, working across all business divisions to ensure that stakeholders have the data they need to make informed decisions. The TiVo Research Group covers market research, user research and usability, and audience research and measurement. Her team works on improving design and customer experiences, in addition to productizing click stream data from TiVo units. Elissa has been at TiVo since 2001.

Prior to joining TiVo, Elissa served as the head of Human Research at Casio U.S. R&D Center for three years, where she developed user-centered research and innovation processes to guide and inform the development of connected devices.

Elissa earned her B.A, M.A., and Ph.D. from Stanford University, focusing on the intersection of media, narrative, and persuasion.

Her favorite TV shows include Entourage, Project Runway, and The Daily Show.