Move like Michael Jackson

Move Like Michael Jackson was a site where users could upload their favourite MJ dance move to the site and other users could rate them and Judges could awards. At several round of wireframing  Eddie at Lion TV worked up some great designs.

The Beauty of Maps

I worked with Chunk Media (http://www.chunkdigital.com/) based in Glasgow and in house editorial and technical teams to produce this site to complement a BBC Four series.

Chunk were a great agency to work with, Donnie (creative director) was always happy to discuss options and produce a variety of solutions. They were open to new ideas on look and feel and art direction. Chunk were particular strong on there integration of deep zoom and flash to produce some really slick immerse interfaces.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/beautyofmaps/historical_maps.shtml#/psalter/intro/

Chunk were also familiar with the prescribed design process (wireframing, persona creation, sacrificial concepts, style and colour treatments) . Adhering to the BBCs website page grid (Global visual Language 2). They were happy to comply with search engine optimisation standards (SEO Aka 'googleability') and the BBC accessibility standards on issues such as colour contrast, link conventions and tab ordering.

Vision multiplatform indie commission process Diagram 2008.

I found working out the project flow for new media projects was becoming  a challenge. Especially if is tight timeline  with multiple stake holders. Figuring out and visually displaying a  process graphicallycan really help highlight the problems and show others that improvements could be mad 

Hamlet BBC4 December 2009

The Royal Shakespeare Company were putting on a performance of Hamlet and BBC2 filmed it. David Tennant (x Doctor Who) playing the lead. The indie commissioned were Traffic Digital, they came up with some great ideas around user interaction, such as interactive timelines and adding archive data from previous productions at the RSC in... so we did.

Jose Deniz (producer) and myself wanted a dark brooding but modern look to the site to reflect the stage production. Jose also wanted a strapline with the impact of a dramatic Eastenders plot line.

 We user tested a few different staplines on secretaries and canteen staff and this one stuck

"My father’s died,
my mother has married my uncle
and I’m being watched" (could happen in Albert Sqaure)

In addition we wanted to use the richness of the scenery and clothing of the production. Traffic were and are great to work with always flexable and friendly. 

Eurovion and Your country needs you : 2008

This project morphed from one TV show to another and the design needed to take this into account. The budget was around 80K. The timescale was around 8 weeks. I managed two freelancer designers working 'in house'. I Chased up the brand assets for the TV shows and working with the guidelines from European Broadcasting Corp  http://www.ebu.ch/  who own the "EuroVision" brand. There was a really strong editorial techincal and creative team on this project, our TPM (technical project manager) even had a Eurovision party. Overall the project hit all it's launch dates and met apporval from the audience.

Strictly Social -- Final treatment

Strictly Social was the BBC's first attempt at a prime time, full access ,second screen experience with voting and live simulcasting through iPlayer. It had a quiz, live commenting and the ability to "Boo", "Wow" and "Gasp".

After an extensive pitch process with various indies. Pancentric and Monterossa were asked to go forward with the project. I wold represent the BBC uxd oversight of this project and present it to the various meeting it needed to go through for high level approval. The design phase of the project went well, early wireframes I gave to Pancentric were iterated and translated into an interface that 'felt' as 'strictly' as the TV show. Pancentric's team did a great job with the visual treatments. Monterossa were engaged for their technical expertise with the forge platform and there own bespoke software solutions.

In hindsight,  this was an ambitious project for the timescale. Also it confused the audience because it offered too much. Arguably this was the wrong product for the 'Strictly' audience. Leesons learnt: keep these offering simpler and allow a passive user experience. ensure the technical archecture exists to handle a project of this size.

Despite these issues the project was worth while, it showed the technical boundaries and capabilities of the BBC technical framework (at the time). But it did show that with a little more time and technical infrastructure, a real time, second-screen experience could be offered a large audience simultaneously.

Victorian Farm: December 2009

Victorian Farm Christmas was a show on BBC2 showing who to make Victorian Christmas treats.

Indie Lion Media were commissioned through the PACT agreement. The timescale was 8 weeks. Lion's designer came up with a visually rich design which picked elements from Victorian Christmas cards and displayed flourishes of iron work reminiscent of the time. The page templates needed a little calming down to fit in with standards and guidelines but I think it still keeps original approach as much as possible.