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.

Mi Vida Loca -- Bafta winner

To everyone's amazement this won an interactive Bafta. However the team involved sweated blood to produce an interactive multi-episode crime mystery which made you learn Spanish at the same time.

Jose Deniz (interactive producer), myself, the camera man and everyone who put up with this crazy project.  Pulled it out the bag :) I was the senior designer, I hired Leo Krikhaar and John Brennan for some great illustrations and promotional material. And managed the look of the site overall.

BBC Languages

I was the senior designer on this working with Dan Bryson (solid freelancer designer) . Manuela and Johann and everyone else for the languages team. The old site was a little tired and the navigation through the content had become confusing. We ran an extensive wireframing and prototyping exercise, removed or re-organised some content, added some new content and delivered a new visual style.  Users liked the fresh site and it gained an iPlayer beating Net Promoter score of 85 from a score of 41 before.

Autumn Watch 2007

I was the senior designer on Autumnwatch 2008. I found, hired and art directed a middleweight freelance designer to deliver the page designs for the site. I controlled design delivery, sign off stages and asset delivery. The team in Bristol from the natural history unit were great to work with and the site delivered a compelling nature extravaganza for users to enjoy. The site scored a very respectable 66 on Net Promoter.

Top Gear redesign 2007 (still up)

I was a strong freelancer and on the Top Gear redesign. We brought the site up to date from the old 800pix wide site the newer 1024 pix layout. We cut afew of the older, less loved parts of the site  and re-arranged a one or two other. I think the site evoke the core premise of the show (blokes, cars and stunts in amazing environments).