My Sky  'From Platform To Experience' – Live brief with DigitasLBi (2015)

Concept Interface by Jay Clark and Scott Smith

Background

DigitasLBi approached us at the D&AD New Blood Show in 2014 to see how we could work closer together. They had seen that our Interactive Media Design students were producing relevant digital work that was less evident in many of the other Graphic Design and Visual Communication related programmes at the Exhibition. Their attention last year had been particularly drawn by the 'Life After Snapchat' project brief that we had worked on with R/GA and the physical computing projects that our students had created for their personal projects.

Educational Challenge

This project was a significant challenge for my students as they were asked to undertake the brief at the same time as the agency, so Sky were informed about the students' undertaking the challenge too. This meant that their work would potentially be reviewed in real-time by both the agency and the client. We hadn't worked with DigitasLBi before so both by myself and students felt the added pressure to deliver quality work on time and to a high standard. Harnessing this motivation to do well whilst giving them the time and support to achieve was central to the success of the project. 

Creative Challenge

TV viewing is changing. There are all sorts of products vying for attention from the likes of pay-tv providers Sky and Virgin to
streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix. There has never been such a glut of content to watch, the choice is overwhelming.
Increasingly, the tech response to this overload of choice is to create highly tailored – even personalised experiences. This is
becoming the expectation in TV entertainment. An overspill from how we experience the web; from apps that act as bespoke
information filters remembering our preferences and last actions to save us time and hassle, to a constant ‘logged-in’ state on social
networks that provide users with a perpetual stream of relevant news based on an algorithm in ever constant refinement. It’s not
long before Google will be able to anticipate our next move and book taxis and order coffees on our behalf.

What does the ‘logged in’ world of hyper personalisation look like when applied to your entertainment eco-system? How does this apply to the baby-boomers and millenials? This isn’t just about recommendations but the whole service that envelopes your TV watching; the upgrade, downgrade options, the conversations about GoT, your household ‘preferences and settings’?

Does your interface become an extension of you? Using your wearable tech to input your mood and filtering content whilst simultaneously upgrading your package should it not contain an adequate ‘mood brightener’ and engaging a customer service rep to fix your On Demand which is now on the blink?

What does the future of customised, omni-channel, multi-screen entertainment experience look like? How does it come to life and how does it drive more meaningful relationship with the brand?

The Ask

Look at the My Sky’s customer channel and the overall Sky viewing experience a fresh. How would you design a service that ultimately
enhances the entertainment experience and improves the consumers overall perception of value they are getting?

How do we integrate the features of silo-ed members websites (My Sky) and apps into an overall multi-channel viewing experience?

Results

We had 12 students, working in pairs produced 6 excellent projects.

Both video prototypes and high fidelity interactive prototypes were created using Proto.io