Skip navigation

Innovation Labs

2008

2007: The Brief

[NB - NEW BRIEFS ADDED! we've added two new briefs - mobile and documentary - at the bottom of this page]

Here are the briefs for the 2006/7 Innovation Labs, supplied by interactive commissioners from around the BBC. At the launch days, the commissioners will explain a bit more about the context of these briefs, and this information will be uploaded to this site. They are not clearly defined product briefs, but descriptions of challenges drawn out of the BBC's internet strategies, where we are interested in finding and developing prototypes for new products or services. Details of how to submit ideas in response to these briefs are in the How To Apply section.

As the BBC Commissioners present the briefs at the Launch Events, we'll be adding their presentations as links under the briefs, so that everyone can access the contextual information. we've also added the generic launch presentations from Matt Locke and the BBC Tech Team.

Matt Locke's 'Introduction to BBC Labs' presentation

Tech Team presentation
on BBC infrastructure and services.

Radio 1 Presentation

Nations and Regions
Localness on bbc.co.uk – There are currently 55 separate Where I Live websites on bbc.co.uk containing a mix of local news, sport, information and community content from across the UK. We want to increase the reach of this content by providing it in the most useful forms for our audience to use. How can we offer local content in more innovative and flexible ways on bbc.co.uk and to engage with, and reflect, the relevant local content and conversations taking place on the web?

News Interactive
News services for young people – BBC News currently has a declining reach amongst 14-24 year olds, and we want to grow this reach via innovative new products. How could we deliver BBC News in an engaging and interactive way to this audience via the BBC News website and platforms like mobiles, online games, public screens or social networking sites?

Sport
BBC Sport is looking to increase its interactivity around the major events in the sports calendar (eg Wimbledon, Rugby World Cup, Euro 2008, Olympics, etc). In particular we are looking to provide innovative services to enhance our coverage of the live action, in real time. We are keen to increase our reach among younger (15-24) audiences and are exploring opportunities on the BBC Sport website, but also on mobile platforms and on the wider internet beyond bbc.co.uk.

Internet Team – search/navigation
Cross platform/location navigation – The BBC is looking for more ways to move users between interactive platforms where there is complementary content and experiences available. How can we move users between various media platforms and physical locations to increase the quality of their BBC experience by delivering them relevant content? How can we do this in ways that will excite and surprise them? Proposals need not be limited to the traditional platforms of “web”, “TV” and “mobile” but could also include use of other IP based media (ie. Instant messaging, email, images) and may want to include location-based or situation-based aspects. They may work across all of the BBC or only a small section and be based on navigation generated by the BBC or by users.

CBBC
Bridging the CBeebies and CBBC age group and brands online: We currently have a drop off point at around 5 years old whereby children feel too old for Cbeebies and too young for CBBC. There are also few instances of us bridging content, brands and services on line from the upper age of CBeebies age group to the lower age of CBBC. How can we aim to bridge that drop off point and create a seamless transition from our Cbeebies brand online to our CBBC brand online?

Interactive Drama & Entertainment
The BBC is looking for new ways to tell stories online. We’re looking for ideas aimed at young audiences who are familiar with the web (13-19 year olds) and at older, more mainstream audiences who are becoming more comfortable with the technology. Successful proposals will have an understanding
of:

* how new web technologies can add depth to the storytelling process
* how gaming elements can be incorporated
* how social networking elements could be incorporated


Radio 1
With FM switch off on the horizon, 10,000 tunes in your pocket, and a widening competitive sphere, Radio 1 will face unprecedented challenges to stay relevant. How can Radio 1 remain a musical right-of-passage for today’s 16-24 year olds?

Radio 1 interactive aims to give it’s audience greater choice over when, where and how they consume Radio 1. Specifically we’re looking for ways to increase access to our output, enable discovery of music and content, enhance our output and build audience participation and creativity.


Capturing the Conversation
How does the BBC monitor, capture and reflect how users are engaging with our programmes, channels, actors and presenters away from the BBC?
How do we represent the latest BBC related memes and reflect that zeitgeist in both our tv and radio journalism and integrate it into bbc.co.uk?

More and more of the activity surrounding BBC programmes and the national conversation takes place online - not on bbc.co.uk, but on blogs, fan sites, forums. More and more consumption of BBC content takes place officially and unofficially in video and photo sharing services and even online games such as Second Life.

We would like to do a better job of integrating this activity into bbc.co.uk. Not just what bloggers are saying about news stories and our latest tv programmes but how users are linking to, consuming, talking about, searching for and uploading BBC output. We'd like to reflect activity taking place in online forums, photo and video sharing sites, news aggregators and encylopaedias to convey a live reflection of user activity in the UK in real time.

This could be one service but is more likely to be a variety of tools, indexes and feeds that can add value to our journalism and improve bbc.co.uk.

Cross Platform Documentary
The growth of social media services had led to an explosion of new and innovative ways of realising and delivering documentary online. How can films be made, presented, shared, augmented, annotated, located, classified and discovered using these new tools? What impact does this have on the craft of documentary and what models should be explored in the future? How can we discover what constitutes documentary in the digital space? Does it have to be 'snackable'? Can it be modular and episodic? Is it possible to be an auteur and simultaneouslly incorporate UGC content?

We are particularly interested in services that use mobile technology as a key part of the documentary experience. Proposals can either be for specific documentaries, or for technologies that could deliver documentary content in a new way across genres.

Mobile Services
We are interested in proposals in three areas related to our mobile services:
1. Made for mobile content
Cultural products that are designed to be consumed on a portable device. The may be standalone or complement media experience on other platforms but they should leverage some unique aspect of the portable device. This might include the personal nature of many portable devices, the fact that such a device might know your location or the fact that you may be in a mobile situation when you are using it.
2. Personal media gateways
The use of portable devices to develop a deeper relationship with the BBC. Applications would include programming a device or service provided by the media organisation, using the device as a 'media token' to carry content or profiles with you or using a portable device to publish to the BBC.
3. Geographically embedded information
Ideas that further our existing work examining how the BBC can create public value through the aggregation or provision of location based information. Topics could range from the information itself through to the user interaction models, technologies or conventions that will characterise such services. Disruptive network technologies and trust models are also of interest.