BBC iPlayer (big screen version)
Adapting the iPlayer website to run (initially) on the Nintendo Wii in a 10ft viewing experience. The application had to maintain the same visual style and interaction patterns as the website, but at the same time be easy to use with various devices such as the wiimote and later on, a playstation controller. My role was to produce the initial designs then work with broadcast designers to optimise it for television.
Experiments in After Effects
An ongoing internal competition in the visual design department to produce short films of under a minute with the aim of finding cool techniques in Adobe After Effects!
BBC Search
Updating BBC Search to make it cleaner, simpler and to bring it up to date with the new design guidelines. Also adding a full television and radio programme search feature alongside filters for news and sport.
BBC iPlayer Desktop
Designed the new desktop version of iPlayer, which involved working with developers from Adobe to produce a cross-platform application based in Adobe Air which would allow easy downloading and playback of BBC programmes, while at the same time clearly explaining to users the concept of programme expiration due to rights issues.
BBC iPlayer (version 2)
I was the lead designer in the 2nd version of the iPlayer website. The main changes from the previous version were to bring in radio programmes alongside television programmes, to create a single place where you could catch up on all available BBC programmes. The addition of radio also meant redesigning the interface to allow easy navigation through the extra 1,00 hours of content per week (the previous tv-only version had 400 hours of programmes).
The website now accounts for around five percent of all UK traffic, and has had approximately five million page views per day as of 25 June 2008. It has also gone on to win numerous awards including the Media Guardian's Innovator of the Year prize and the web award at the Prix Italia International Broadcasting Festival.
Read more on the redesign in my post on the BBC Internet Blog
BBC Embedded Media Player
As part of the BBC's redesign of it's entire website, I was given the brief to design a single embedded flash media player which would consistently be used to playback all video and audio across bbc.co.uk - this includes News & Sport, iPlayer and all the programme, tv channel and radio station sites.
The player was also to be used for both live and on-demand streams and across various platforms including web, mobile and television. It was also to allow features such as sharing content with friends, and posting to external sites such as Facebook, Digg and Delicious.
View live video player (white version) on BBC One
BBC Archive full screen navigation
I was asked to produce the interaction and visual design for a full screen video player as part of the BBC Archive trial. The player was to allow users to navigate through various content during playback while at the same time make them aware of various 'collections' of programmes which had been editorially compiled.
BBC Two and Three
I was part of the design team working with the BBC TV channels to develop their online presence. Part of the brief involved initial experiments in streaming full programmes over the internet, with much of these findings then leading to projects like iPlayer which were to follow.
Ben is an experienced visual, interaction and motiongraphics designer based in London.
Untill recently he worked in the Future Media & Technology department at the BBC where he had been lead design in a number of key projects including the BBC iPlayer. He now works as a freelance designer.
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