A new live sport experience

Introduction

Providers in the TV and entertainment sector are facing great challenges: Customers now consume content on a wide variety of end devices, in different contexts and in an increasingly less linear fashion. At the same time, they have a demand for function and experience that is shaped by major tech players such as Netflix, Amazon and Facebook. To survive in this environment and to meet their own high demands despite significantly smaller budgets and team sizes, a strong will and ability to innovate, an agile approach and efficient partners are needed.

Challenge

Our customer - a large international telco - distributes its content over IP to mobile devices, set-top boxes, streaming devices, smart TVs and over the web. Especially with regard to their own sports content - much of it live - the big screen (TV) is one of the most important target devices. The user experience for the viewers should be nothing short from exceptional. As a basis for this, an outstanding idea was needed that would be different from the always same "Netflix rows". The timespan from idea to live was very tight: 5 months. It was required to perfectly link archive and live content, the best approach was to selected in a pitch and transferred directly to the sprint based development path.

Solution

The live feed concept was created using an internally conducted design sprint, combined with needs identified in interviews with real users. Depending on their preferences, users are provided with customized content in their feed - ideally also with so-called live tiles, which draw users directly into currently running  events. This core idea has been transferred into a prototype with the help of our technical development partner and tested with users in a living room environment and on a TV set with a remote control. The concept was adapted and broken down into UX work packages that fit the sprint mechanics. We have found a two-week head start by the UX team to the development team as very successful.

The project exceeded all expectations by the outstanding idea that is able to meet the needs of both the users and the client - in time and in budget.

‍