Innovation Labs

Schedule for Day two

Day two on the Lab is focusing on understanding your users their motivations. The aim of the day is to build a 5 minute pitch based on the user profiles developed yesterday, telling a story about how your users engage with your product. The morning will focus on understanding user contexts and user modes, with the afternoon developing these into user scenarios. Finally, we will ask you to identify the three key user benefits of your product, and how you will express these in your pitch.

10:00 - Introduction to the day and some of the user-centred design tools we're using
10:30 - 12.30 - project teams working in pairs to help each other develop user contexts and user modes

1:00 - 2:00 Lunch

2:00 - 4.30 - Teams working individually to develop user journeys for their products. Mentors will be available throughout this time if you need specific assistance or ideas for design tools
4:30 - 5.30 - Project teams back in their pairs to develop user benefits
5:30 - 6:00 - Prepare user-centred 5 minute pitch
6:00 - Teams split into two groups for pitching and feedback

Save9's Monday & Tuesday Update

Introduction

Save9's project proposal aims to address all three of the main elements of the BBC's internet strategy - how the BBC makes content available on-demand, how people navigate BBC content and how people engage with BBC content.

Background

Broadcast TV permeates the lives of millions of people across the globe and on-demand video content is reaching an ever-increasing audience. Innovative digital television services are in abundance and the cross-over between linear media broadcasting and interactive media on-demand is blurring. It is not unusual to find internet web browsers built into modern televisions or for viewers to use interactive services supplied via digital terrestrial and satellite broadcasts. IPTV is a prime example of broadcasting and Internet convergence that has support from major electronics manufacturers such as PACE Micro Technology (PACE announced the worlds first ever hardware H.264 IPTV set-top-box in June 2005)...

http://www.pace.co.uk/corporate/newsroom/pacenewsitem.asp?id=10270&template=0

Project Summary

An opportunity now exists for Save9 Limited, in conjunction with the BBC Innovation Labs, to explore the potential of flowing synchronous meta data, split into topics of interest, with current digital video content via TV transmissions (DVB-SI) on a set-top box and/or on-demand digital recordings accessible through the MyBBC Player (or BBC iMP - integrated Media Player). http://www.bbc.co.uk/imp

Tech Note: DVB transmissions include a metadata transport layer called service information (DVB-SI). AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) in conjunction with an EPG (Electronic Programming Guide) and the BBC Infax database is another possible value added service that would simplify the roll-out of this concept without the need to affect original broadcast transmissions at all.

Our main task for this week is to develop a prototype 'plug-in' that works with the MyBBC Player and/or an in-built digital TV-web browser that could theoretically support the user-insertion and viewer playback of annotated video content. The result would be an enriched and interactive BBC experience that is attained through the true convergence of broadcast television and internet services – with a minimal resource burden from broadcasters such as the BBC.

How it works - User Profile Scenarios

Key thought - 'Bubbles in a stream'

Example Scenario - THE ENTHUSIAST

'Frank', our imaginary sports enthusiast, is a UK Manchester City fan who eats, drinks, breathes and sleeps football. Frank feeds his interest through a range of media types; websites, newspapers, TV and radio. Frequently there are times when Frank gets very emotional about his sport - so much so that he would like to clearly demonstrate to the world why Man City's lead scorer (i.e. Andy Cole) is such a genius or how a particular section of the BBC televised game was ruined by a referee's decision. Frank may even want to highlight a few seconds in their most recent televised match to explain the off-side rule to his american friend. :-)

Using Save9's Synchronous Hyperlinking plug-in for the MyBBC Player Frank can now watch an entire digital video stream of any football match and insert topics of interest ('Bubbles') that can span from a split second to an entire section of the video. For example - at 15 minutes and 12 seconds into the second half a superb goal is scored by Andy Cole - is at that precise moment when Frank decides to insert a 'Bubble' comment icon and associated text/graphics into that defining video moment - captured for the posterity of his fan club (or even the whole of the UK!). Such annotations are accessible to other viewers who may watch the video at their leisure. Franks comments can be visualised in a side panel window via a simple toggle on/off button.

GUI (Graphical User Interface): A narrow window immediately below the media video screen represents the 'Bubbles' of annotations in the video 'Stream'. Put simply, different 'Bubbles' of information topics are represented by simple icons that stream slowly from right to left, as the video plays forward.

The power of our interactive concept is realised when you consider that almost any interest group can add topics of interest so that other parties may consume that content whether it is embedded graphical/video/textual data or a link to a 3rd party website. The 'Bubbles' stimulate interest depending upon the topic classification's icon. E.g. a 'i' icon for information, a star icon for a movie actor, a musical note for a piece of interesting music or a tree icon for an item relating to nature.

More later...

TechnoPhobia's first day

We were thrown in at the deep-end because we had to pitch our idea on two separate occasions. Having said that, this isn’t as bad as it sounds because doing this really helped us to refine and articulate our idea. The BBC used a phrase that sums this philosophy up really nicely - “How do I know what I think until I see what I say.”
Pitching your idea and discussing it helps you to see what people latch on to and what they find interesting about it.

We quickly found out after the first presentation that we wouldn’t get very far in this exercise without having a specific target audience to map our idea onto so this was the real aim of today. We sat down with 2 of the BBC’s mentors and began to pick their brains about the strengths of our idea and where it would sit best. After some
deliberation we came up with two main groups where it would fly:

+ Parents - a group that is vocal, social and keen to make their experiences public - even if only within a closed community. We quickly ruled this user group out because it was deemed by the BBC to be too competitive, with sites already in place to serve this niche.

+ Minority sports groups (e.g. Wrestling, kayaking, shooting, archery…). With the Olympics coming to London in 2012 investment is being channelled into sports and there are minority sports out there that don’t get the platform (can’t afford an all-singing, all dancing website/journalists don’t sniff out these news stories) that is
afforded to events such as track and field. Therefore there is a gap where our idea may sit to provide these sports with a voice on the BBC website. This will serve to allow local clubs to upload their news stories, details of upcoming events and results for this data to be easily accessed by BBC journalists. Members of the clubs will have
control over content and be able to publish and comment. Anyone can also access this content and find out how to get involved so the site encourages positive action.

So we sit poised and ready for day two with a sound idea of who our users are and in a good position to develop this further today.