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TV Anywhere

Virgin Media

We created an online user interface to help viewers discover more content.

THE CHALLENGE

Virgin Media offer a comprehensive broadband and cable TV service in the UK. They launched the TiVo service at the end of 2010, and within a year of its launch had nearly half a million subscribers. Recognising the need to keep up with their subscribers’ viewing habits, Virgin Media wanted to deliver TV content, live or on-demand, in any location, at any time, via any device. They called the service Virgin TV Anywhere and they engaged us to assist with creating a signature user interface and user experience for its online component.

THE SOLUTION

It was vital that the user experience was seamlessly integrated into Virgin Media’s existing portfolio of services and for the social integration and content recommendations to be intuitive and easy to use.

Our approach followed a user-centric design methodology, putting Virgin TiVo users at the heart of the solution. Using customer personas for the development of key user journeys, we defined a navigational paradigm, developed detailed wireframes and created a UI (user interface) design that exposes the depth of content available and encourages users to ‘dive deeper’ through the use of recommendations and social integration.

Our interface centres around three key levels that allow users to move fluidly through the service and various content areas. In the Carousel, users can explore the depth of content available through dynamic content panels and direct links to shows; in the Listings Menu, users can filter and search for content easily; and in the Content Page users can watch live TV, VoD and catch-up content whilst discovering more through additional content panels such as cast, recommendations and social media.

Our solution also integrated TiVo functionally into the interface allowing users to “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” content, set reminders, record and manage their PVR content.

TiVo and Social Integration

We designed the UX so that audiences could discover content by the weight of social media activity around it, and see Tweets relating to specific pieces of content.