BBC
Postgraduate project · Hyper Island
How could the BBC stay connected with festival audiences all year?
Looking for clues in festival experiences that could help the BBC connect with its audience all year round.
- Year
- 2015
- Discipline
- Design research
- My role
- Researcher (literature review, user and expert interviews, inspirational visit, analysis), concept development
BBC Digital wanted to use its platforms and content to connect summer festivals with learning and entertainment during the rest of the year. Our brief was to find opportunities in how people experienced those festivals.
Approach
Over three weeks our team of four combined qualitative and quantitative research: five user interviews, three expert interviews, an inspirational visit to the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe, and an online survey with 47 responses.
Two opportunity areas
- People planned extensively before a festival but were more open to trying things once they arrived. There was room for the BBC to help with both planning and discovery.
- People wanted content that matched their more specific interests, including niche music and subcultures. The BBC could help them explore those interests after the festival.
Two concepts
- Group Itinerary Genius: an app that combines friends' interests to suggest a shared festival itinerary.
- Smart Wristband: a wristband that records a visitor's festival journey, creating a personal timeline linked to their BBC ID for later content recommendations.
Outcome
We proposed two concepts based on the research: one to help people plan together before a festival, and another to recommend relevant BBC content afterwards.
Reflection
I found the synthesis demanding. We had a lot of material to work through, and everyone needed to understand the research well enough to question our interpretations. Supporting one another through that work mattered, especially when we disagreed.
Team: Dessy Chongarova, Edwina Nolan, Emma Crowe, JL Wong (MA Digital Experience Design, Hyper Island)