BBC's Blog, page 12

Connected Studio - BBC Comedy Update

Since we announced our intention to run a Connected
Studio for Comedy back in June, quite a lot has happened. First we held a
briefing event attended by lots of different digital companies and agencies.
There was a really great buzz about the project; everyone was excited by the
brief to explore new ways of telling stories.

Following this, over twenty companies applied
in the hope of being part of the Development Studio event. The quality of the
submissions was extremely high and it was a difficult judging process and sadly
we could only take eight companies to the next stage.

The Teams were:

AardmanKanotiRalphRCKT MudlarkStorythingsFish in a BottleUnit9 

Over two days on the South Bank in London,
Comedy Production, Connected Studio and the eight digital companies came
together to explore new ways of telling the story we had chosen. We began by
watching one of the ‘Inside No. 9’ TV episodes, and discussing the
claustrophobic, pressure cooker nature of the storytelling.

The eight teams were then given time, space
and support to put together their proposals for a digital experience to tell
the story. We gave them access to the writer Ed Hime, feedback sessions with
members of the target audience to help refine their ideas, and time with comedy
actors to shoot video or photographs they would like to use in their pitches.

Here is a video which gives a flavor of the
event and what we hope to achieve from this collaboration.

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BBC Comedy and Connected Studio host an event exploring new ways of digital storytelling

At the end of the second day, we were
completely bowled over with eight wildly creative and distinctive pitches. The
teams enjoyed pitching in front of each other, something they were not used to.
The bar was set very high, but after  the
judging process, we decided to offer the project to Kanoti, who had proposed to
create an HTML 5 scrolling photo comic to tell the story.

We have now kicked off the project and over
the next month or so we will see Kanoti’s creative vision start to take shape.
We’re excited to see a great story and a new format working together to deliver
an innovative and engaging pilot that will be hosted online.

Next step is casting
for the shoot and then filming the cinemagraph images and recording the audio.
Meanwhile Kanoti are working on the development of the technology that will
power the experience which is HTML5 parallax scrolling, cinemagraphs and audio
to create an audio visual story experience. 
Parallax scrolling is essentially a technique employed in 2D, layered
computer games where the background moves slower than the foreground in order
to give a feeling of depth, very similar to the technique used in early
animation.

This collaboration between BBC Comedy and
Connected Studio is just a part of the BBC exploring new ways of
production.  For us in BBC Comedy it is a
foray into creating new digital experiences, whether they're connected to a TV
show or exist as a standalone experience. 
While for Connected Studio it is finding new ways of working with
Content Production and bringing them together with digital content makers.   

For more details on the Connected Studio
initiative, visit the Connected Studio website   

Jon Aird is a producer in BBC Comedy

 

What’s on BBC Red Button 31 August – 7 September

Get your dancing shoes on for a busy week on Red Button! There’s something for everyone as we take you behind the scenes at the launch of Strictly Come Dancing 2013 as Lisa Riley interviews this year’s participating celebrities. We’ll have the latest news on an exciting football transfer deadline day and relive a summer of live music with BBC Asian Network.

Strictly Come Dancing 2013: Red Carpet Show

Lisa Riley presents the Strictly Red Carpet Show

The full line-up for this year’s Strictly is revealed on The One Show on Monday 2 September. Join Strictly 2012 contestant Lisa Riley for a spectacular red carpet extravaganza as all the celebrity contestants are interviewed for the first time. Fans of the Saturday night show will have backstage access to the studio which will also include introductions to the new professional dancers - Aljaz Skorjanec, Anya Garnis, Iveta Lukosiute, Janette Manrara and Kevin Clifton.

The 20-minute programme will bring all the glitz and glamour of the Hollywood-style red carpet before the new dancing couples begin their journey into a life of sequins and sambas this autumn. Stay up-to-date with the latest news and gossip via the Strictly Come Dancing blog.

Available on all platforms

Wed 25 August, 6pm-Midnight

 

Summer of Music 2013

Jaz Dhami performing at Manchester Mela 2013

Relive a summer of live music and festival vibes as BBC Asian Network brings the best performances from London and the Manchester Mela. There’s music from Harshdeep Kaur, AS Kang, Jaz Dhami and many more as we celebrate a Summer of Music on the BBC Red Button. Don’t miss it!

Available on all platforms  

Mon 2 September, 11.15pm-Midnight
Tue 3 September, Midnight-1.45pm, 3.15pm-Midnight
Wed 4 September, Midnight-6pm
Thu 5 September, All day
Fri 6 September, Midnight-Noon, 1pm-7pm, 11.30pm-Midnight
Sat 7 September, Midnight-7.55am, 9.55am-12.10pm, 6pm-7.25pm

 

Football Focus: Deadline Day

BBC Sport presenter Dan Walker will help bring you the latest transfer news

Dan Walker and the Football Focus team round-up will bring you all the major transfer deadline day moves with news and reaction from around the country.

After months of speculation over the future of some of the Premier League’s biggest stars, top-flight clubs have until 11pm on Monday to strengthen their squads, and invariably many transfers will only be resolved at the last minute.

Last summer, English clubs spent over £490m in the transfer window, with deadline-day moves including Dimitar Berbatov’s switch from Manchester United to Fulham and Tottenham’s acquisition of Hugo Lloris from Lyon.

Available on all platforms

Mon 2 September, 1pm-11.15pm

 

Antiques Roadshow Play-along

Tune in to BBC One at 8pm on Sunday and test your antiques expertise by pressing red or using the show’s own play-along app.

Cast your eyes over the items as they appear on screen, and see if you can guess how much the show’s experts think they’re worth. There’s also a new challenge for this year – can you pick out the fake item from the Rogues’ Gallery?

Available on Sky/Freeview

Sun 1 September, 7.55pm – 9pm

 

This Week’s Sport Highlights

There’s a packed sport schedule on Red Button this weekend with British GP MotoGP racing, Final Score for all the latest football scores, the rowing World Championships and Diamond League athletics. For a full list and times of sport coverage on Red Button see the BBC Sport website. Please note times are subject to change. 

 

Edinburgh Festival

Sue Perkins presents the final programme from the Edinburgh Festival featuring an interview with Booker prize winner DBC Pierre, Alastair Sooke on an exhibition by Austrian artist Franz West, two live Chinese heavy metal bands in an epic version of Coriolanus, and some of the best comedy and theatre from the Fringe.

Available on all platforms

Sat 31 August, Midnight-7am, 10.45am-12.20pm
Sun 1 September, 4.05pm-7.55pm
Mon 2 September, 6am-1pm

Keep up with all the latest news by following us on Twitter  @BBCRedButton

What's on BBC Red Button 24 - 31 August

This
week on BBC Red Button has a packed schedule including plenty of music and
arts festival coverage from Reading and Edinburgh, highlights of the Stereophonics performing for Radio 2 In Concert and the exhilarating
spectacle of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

Reading
Festival coverage continues on the Red Button this weekend and arts fans should
catch the final Edinburgh Festival show with Sue Perkins presenting the best from the Fringe. There’s also the spectacle
of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo and a great mix of
sporting action including the F1 Grand Prix from Belgium and MotoGP.

Biffy Clyro are among the weekend’s big acts

 

Reading
Festival

Reading
Festival returns to rock the nation with artists from across the Main and Radio 1/NME
stages.

Saturday’s
coverage includes The Blackout, Twin Atlantic, White Lies, Deaf Havana,
Modestep, Palma Violets, Johnny Marr, Imagine Dragons, Tame Impala and Alt-J.

Sunday’s
lineup features Hadouken! Don Broco, Editors, Nine Inch Nails, Alunageorge, Tribes,
Alex Clare, City & Colour and Phoenix.

Available on all platforms

Sat
24 August, 18:00 – 01:00

Sun 25 August, 21:00 – 01:00

 

Edinburgh Festival

Sue
Perkins presents the final programme from the Edinburgh Festival featuring an
interview with Booker prize winner DBC Pierre, Alastair Sooke on an exhibition
by Austrian artist Franz West, two live
Chinese heavy metal bands in an epic version of Coriolanus and some of the best comedy and theatre from the
Fringe.

Available on all platforms

Tue 27 August, 10pm – 6am

Wed 28 August, 10pm – 6am

Thu 29 August, 8pm – 6am

Fri 30 August, 6am – 9am, 11am – 12pm, 1pm – 6am

Sat 31 August, 6am – 7am, 10:45am – 12:20pm

Radio 2 in Concert: Stereophonics

Join Jo
Whiley in London's BBC Radio Theatre for Radio 2 In Concert
with the Stereophonics performing a selection of their biggest hits plus tracks
from their latest album.

Available on all platforms

Sat
24 August, 6am – 11:20am

Mon 26 August, 8pm – 6am

Tue 27 August, 6am – 10am

Wed 28 August, 6am – 7:30pm

Thu 29 August, 6am – 8pm

Edinburgh Military Tattoo
 

Edinburgh
Military Tattoo

Get extra content from the exhilarating spectacle that
is the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Press red for audio options during the
programme, and immediately following the BBC One broadcast, catch performances
by acts including the Massed Pipes & Drums and Military Bands.

Available on all platforms

Mon 26 August, 6:30pm – 8:00pm

 

Antiques
Roadshow play-along

Tune in
to BBC One at 8pm on Sunday and test your antiques expertise by
pressing red or using the show’s own play-along app.

Cast
your eyes over the items as they appear on screen, and see if you can guess how
much the show’s experts think they’re worth. There’s also a new challenge for
this year – can you pick out the fake item from the Rogues’ Gallery?

Available on Sky/Freeview

Sun 25 August, 7.55pm – 9pm

 

This
week’s sport highlights

This
weekend sees the conclusion of the Euro Nations Hockey Championships, F1 from
the Belgian Grand Prix, MotoGP action from the Czech Republic and much more. For
a full list and times of sport coverage on Red Button see the BBC Sport website. Please note times are subject to
change. 

Keep up with all the latest news by following us on
Twitter @BBCRedButton

Designing new icons for the BBC's Global Experience Language

I'm Simon Rooney, Creative Director for the BBC Global Experience Language (GEL) and part of the User Experience and Design team for BBC Future Media.

In a previous post, my colleague Andrew Greenham gave an overview of the (then) recently launched BBC design guidelines and patterns for Mobile, IPTV and Tablet devices. This included an insight into the development of a distinctive new suite of icons for GEL.

Since then, the GEL Team have been busy working on a number of new design initiatives for Responsive, Navigation, Infographics and Games, to name just a few. These will be discussed at a later date.

In this post I’d like to focus on the recent completion of 119 additional GEL icons, designed to compliment our services based on specific requirements from BBC product areas like Travel, Sport & Childrens.

All the new icon sets were designed over the last three months, in collaboration with the agency Planning Unit.

As done previously, these icons were designed to enable a consistent visual language across all BBC digital platforms - web, mobile and television. In this respect, the icons are utilised in various capacities such as action and status as well as identity. They needed to be simple, unambiguous and where possible, unique to the BBC.

The icon style therefore, continues to embrace a contemporary British design aesthetic, presenting the personality and quirks of the BBC whilst being respectful of our broadcasting heritage.

This is demonstrated in the recent design of a microphone icon that is featured in the new Controls & Devices icon set. While other microphone icon examples take a modern representation, we thought that a nod towards an iconic, classic design felt more appropriate for the BBC.

Representing BBC personality in icon visual language

Travel Icons

This approach continued during the conceptual design phase of the new Travel icon set. We already had a ‘car’ icon to represent ‘traffic’ in our previous core icon set. This was created in association with R/GA  during the last icon design phase. However, as part of this new commission, it was now necessary to represent a number of additional modes of transport such as train, tube (underground), tram/metro, bus, ferry and commercial aircraft.

Original Travel Icon design explorations

Using the car icon as a stylistic starting point, we soon realised that taking a similar front-on view in each case, made it difficult to differentiate certain items such as the train, tube and tram/metro, especially at the required smaller sizes. Taking the iconic side profile view of the Inter-City train design, whilst incorporating the characteristic shapes of the windows & head-lights of the underground train, helped with the differentiation. They are both quintessentially British and yet universally recognised.

Examples from the new GEL Travel Icon set at 200% & 100% (32x32 pixels)

As mentioned previously, it was important that each icon was crafted at the required smaller sizes to maintain clarity and minimise unnecessary blurring. This was achieved by using 32x32 and 13x13 pixel grids in each case, restricting angles to fifteen degree increments (15, 20, 45 etc.) wherever possible, along with only using complete pixel stroke weights.

Detailed examples of the 32x32 pixel and 13x13 pixel train icon with grid (at 600% & 100%)



Travel Product page examples (Beta versions) incorporating new icons in situ

Sport Icons

The requirement for a brand new GEL set of Sport icons was a particular challenge in this design delivery. These were commissioned as a result of the successful usage of the Official Olympic icons last year in BBC Sport applications & services. Consequently, the GEL Icon design style needed to evolve slightly to allow for a more pictorial, dynamic approach, especially when representing the human figure.

For the most part, Sport categories could be represented using distinctive game accessories and equipment.

Sport category examples using game accessories (32x32 pixel versions at 200% & 100%)

However, certain Sport types such as athletics, gymnastics, judo and horse racing, needed to incorporate a human figure somehow. Up to that point, the use of people in the GEL Icon suite had been limited to very simple, generic forms.

Early Sport sketches using the human figure

It was obvious from the start that such a generic approach wouldn’t work for the Sport sub-set. So once again as a starting point, we took an unused horse-racing icon developed during the last design phase by R/GA. From this, we experimented with different styles, for example utilizing head-gear to communicate facial direction. We also looked at cropping the human torso to emphasize core action and concentrate on key sporting moments.

Original GEL Icon examples that use generic human forms followed by early Sport examples

After consultation with representatives in the Sport design and editorial teams, we realized that trying to impose existing GEL styleguide rulings and techniques rendered the icons a bit too sterile and lifeless. Also, an over-reliance of the headgear device gave us problems for sports that didn’t really require them. Headbands and swimming caps looked particularly odd! In summary, these early examples lacked the personality, energy and excitement required.

So a less constrained approach was taken, using the full body shape and more anatomically correct proportions. Although we continued to utilize angles in multiples of 15 degrees as much as possible, there was less of an angle restriction when creating the human characters, to give us the required flexibility to reflect dynamic movement.

Detail of 32x32px and 16x16px Volleyball icon illustrating human treatment at 600% & 100%

To provide some synergy with the other GEL icon sets, line breaks were used to represent trailing/back limbs which taper at the hand/foot end to give the character some depth. Finally, the human face is defined by removing a flat section from the circular head to help give the character definition and direction.

Sport category examples using human forms (32x32 pixel versions at 200% and 100%)

The icons for Sport and Travel are already being incorporated into their respective Product areas and are being user-tested in prototypes as we speak. So, we look forward to hearing any feedback from you.

Sport icons in situ

The full GEL icon suite assets with all the new additions are now available to download from the iconography section of the GEL website along with an updated icon styleguide (PDF) .

Simon Rooney is Creative Director, GEL, BBC Future Media

Bitesize Study Guides

Hi - I’m Ali Craigmile, Senior Product Manager in BBC Future Media.

In this post, I’d like to talk about some work which my team and I have been involved in recently: improving BBC Bitesize.

Today we're announcing the addition of a feature we're calling study guides in the Knowledge & Learning beta site.

This new content format builds upon the Revise > Activity > Test pattern of learning which is at the core of the Bitesize offer. It retains the Bitesized content too, but crucially (and this is what we're especially proud of) does so irrespective of the browser and device you have.

Bitesize study guides are fully responsive, designed from a mobile first perspective, are more accessible than before and they look great following a long overdue GEL makeover.

Flashpoints - Poland, Hungary, Berlin, Cuba - Bitesize guide from National 5 History

Innovation

Bitesize has innovated continually since it started back in 1998. Each year we’ve have added new subjects to the site, and we’ve refreshed our revision, activity and test bites as the curriculum changed.

The 75 Flash activities we published in KeyStage 3 History, Geography and ICT subjects last year demonstrate this brilliantly.

However the numerous changes over the years has led to:
 
• a site which is difficult to maintain;

• a format, the Revision Bite, which meant different things to different people; and

• an over-reliance on Flash to provide interactivity.

There were also major challenges in the work that lay ahead of us in reflecting the fundamental changes to the curriculum in Scotland, and extensive rewrites to the National Curriculum in the other nations.

And the increase in mobile and tablet devices used by audiences, many of which don’t support Flash.

And finally, as part of the wider strategy to make BBC Online better for audiences we felt a new approach was needed to deliver key functionality we know they want. Therefore, last summer while the rest of the country was busy watching the Olympics, a small team was brought together to explore these problems.

We started by pulling together everything we could about our audience. We spoke to students and teachers in focus groups, looked for patterns in our server logs, at spoke internally with our producers too. Any insight we could get into what worked, and what didn’t – what was feasible, and where there were opportunities for a future Bitesize were scrutinised carefully.

As a student, I would like …, so that …

The outcome of this work was a small set of personas (helping us to understand our audience behaviours) and a much larger set of user stories (describing what our users needed).

If you’re a regular reader of the Internet blog, you’ll know that our teams have embraced the User-centred design approach.

The key benefit for me in having done this is that it’s been nigh on impossible to forget about our users and their needs. In every planning, triage, sprint demo and daily stand-up we do, 8 words come up more than any others: "As a student, I would like …, so that …".

At this point, we expanded our team to include design and development staff. We prioritised our user stories, and then explored each in turn, imagining what we’d need to build to realise them for our audience – identifying as we went any HTML pages and reusable visual components that we could incorporate into the build.

We built paper prototypes, and technical mock-ups when there were things we needed to see or test working too. As improved navigation and responsiveness were two of the more important improvements we wanted to achieve, these got a lot of love at this point.

We decided to build up on the Knowledge & Learning beta (launched back in April) we also pinned down any ground rules for the developers around browser support, accessibility and house style.

The types of responsive components that we defined which make up a Study Guide included: text, images, video, audio, poems, equations, quiz questions, foreign text, lists, tables, infographics, and more.

Development

The task of building these new components fell to our experienced team of software engineers, web developers, designers, and testers.

To complicate matters a wee bit, the Future Media Knowledge & Learning team is split between two cities: Glasgow and Salford. Working between these 2 office locations has called for some innovative ways of working. Our daily-stand-ups include a video conferencing component, as do our sprint planning sessions, demos, … pretty much any meeting I’m in some days.

As a result we were able to strictly adhere to our 2 weekly sprint cycle, and have been iterating through the product backlog for some time.

If you’re interested in the specifics of the technology stack we’ve building against, Robert Lee has blogged previously about this.

Content is King

In parallel with all of the activities I’ve touched upon, our editorial and production colleagues have been busy commissioning Bitesize study guides.

This week, we've published our first batch of these (in English and Gaelic) covering topics in the Scottish National 4 and National 5 levels. My colleague John Millner, has blogged about this ‘next big step’.

We’ve worked with John’s teams on a Production Guide, to ensure that they’re making the most of our shiny new components and we’ve liaised on their behalf with the team developing iSite, our in-house content management system.

We’ve also worked with them in developing our Curriculum topic dictionary, the glue that holds our content together, and the basis of our navigation. We publish this to the BBC’s Linked Data Platform for our in-house use, and we’ve released it on an open licence for external use too.

What next?

Over the next few months we will be looking at how improve our external linking, search, completing additional work on the design of Bitesize study guides from a student’s perspective, and to improve further the content management experience for our production teams (phew!)

We’ll also be adding more video clips to the Classroom resources section of the Beta and are looking to start migrating our existing Bitesize content over too.

Before any of that, we’ll be looking at how our new format is used (back to the server logs again!), and at any feedback we receive.

If you’d like to share your thoughts with us on this Beta, I’d very much like to hear from you. Please either comment below, or email us at knowledgeandlearningfeedback@bbc.co.uk.

Ali Craigmile is a senior product manager working in BBC Future Media.

What's on BBC Red Button 17 - 24 August

Favourites old and new on the Red Button this week, as we welcome back the Antiques Roadshow play-along quiz on Sunday night, and bring you extensive coverage of England, Scotland and Ireland’s matches in the European Hockey Championship. There’s also top-notch music and arts from the Reading and Edinburgh festivals, Stereophonics live in concert at the BBC Radio Theatre, and magical larks for kids with Tree Fu Tom.

Fiona Bruce

 
Antiques Roadshow
 
A new series of Antiques Roadshow starts on Sunday – and that means the return of the ever-popular Red Button play-along quiz.

Cast your eyes over the items as they appear on screen, and see if you can guess how much the show’s experts think they’re worth. There’s also a new challenge for this year – can you pick out the fake from Fiona Bruce’s four suspect items?

Tune in at 8pm on Sunday on BBC One, and play along at home by pressing red or using the show’s own play-along app.
 
Available on Sky/Freeview
Sun 18 August, 7.55pm – 9pm

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day

 

Reading Festival
 
Get stuck in to sets from one of Europe’s most celebrated rock festivals this Bank Holiday Weekend. Red Button has highlights from artists including A$AP Rocky, Deftones, Alt-J, Phoenix, Alunageorge and Nine Inch Nails from Friday to Sunday, while online and Virgin Tivo viewers can catch live coverage from across the festival, including headline sets by Eminem, Green Day and Biffy Clyro.
 
Available for Freeview/Freesat/Sky/Virgin Media viewers:
 
Fri 23 August, 7.30pm – 1am
Sat 24 August, 6pm – 1am
 
Available for Virgin Tivo viewers:
 
Fri 23 August – Sun 25 August

 
Radio 2 In Concert – Stereophonics
 
Thursday is Stereophonics day on Radio 2, as Kelly Jones and his band perform an exclusive concert at London’s BBC Radio Theatre – and you can watch the whole show on Red Button. Press red from 8pm on Thursday to see the gig live, or check the times below to see when you can catch replays later on in the week.
 
Available on all platforms

Thu 22 August, 7.55pm – 9.30pm, 11.30pm – 7am
Fri 23 August, 9am – 12pm, 7pm – 7.30pm
Sat 24 August, 1am – 11.20am

 
Edinburgh 2013
 
Sue Perkins presents a second selection of highlights from the Edinburgh Festival, including Grid Iron's site-specific theatre extravaganza, Leaving Planet Earth. Alastair Sooke meets Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco, and critic Lyn Gardner gives her pick of the best theatre on the Fringe. There’s also a look at this year's standout stand-ups.
 
Available on all platforms

Sun 18 August, 9pm – 6am
Mon 19 August, 9pm – 6am
Tue 20 August, 9.30pm – 6am
Wed 21 August, 10pm – 6am

 
This week’s sport highlights
 
We’re delighted to welcome the European Hockey Championship to Red Button this week. You can watch England, Scotland and Ireland in action in the men’s and women’s tournaments by pressing red, as well as the semi-finals and final. Check the BBC Sport website to find out when you can catch our coverage.
 
There’s also news and action from rugby league's Super League Show on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Football League Show is on Saturday night and Sunday morning in case you miss the original outing, and you can join Jacqui Oatley on Tuesday for the latest WSL highlights from the Women’s Football Show.
 
Available on all platforms
 
Note that live sport event times are subject to change. For more information on this week's sport on Red Button, visit the BBC Sport website.

 
Tree Fu Tom
 
Help Tom to save the day by joining in with this exclusive spell-along service. Alex shows you how to create your very own magic belt just like Tom’s, made from everyday items you’ll find around the house. You can join in and sing along to the Tree Fu Tom theme tune with a special karaoke version that has words on screen. Get into your spell pose and follow Tom and the children on screen to perform Big World Magic.
 
Available on all platforms

Sat 17 August, 6am – 9am, 1pm – 2.30pm, 6pm – 6.30pm  
Mon 19 August, 6am – 3pm, 5pm – 7pm
Tue 20 August, 6am – 1pm, 4.50pm – 5pm
Wed 21 August, 6am – 10.30am, 12.30pm – 6.50pm
Thu 22 August, 6am – 5pm
 

Top of the Lake
 
Press red on Saturday night for an in-depth look behind the scenes of Top of the Lake with co-creator Jane Campion, and discover how the show’s creative team brought its complex themes to the screen.
 
Available on all platforms

Sat 17 August, 10.05pm – 1.10am

 

Don't forget you can follow  @BBCRedButton
on Twitter.

The CBeebies Playtime App

CBeebies Playtime, a mobile app for Android, iOS, and Kindle Fire devices has launched. It’s designed for our audience of young
children and their families, enabling them to play games featuring much loved
CBeebies brands - anytime and anywhere.

The way children consume content is changing, as Joe Godwin,
Director of BBC Children’s, explains here
with tablets and smartphones becoming increasingly important. That’s why we’re
introducing our first Children’s app, offering our audience a safe and trusted
environment for handheld devices, free from marketing and paid for updates,
that enables children to learn through play alongside their favourite CBeebies
characters.

My colleague Lizzie Leadbeater has written about the app’s
features over on the CBeebies grown-ups blog and I’d like to
share some insight into how we built the app.

CBeebies Playtime Hub

Our aim was to create an app that was high quality, yet
simple enough for even the youngest children to use, and to incorporate all the
things children love about CBeebies; silliness, action, humour and excitement.
But above all else, it needed to inspire creativity and imagination whilst
being educationally beneficial.

CBeebies covers the 0 to 6 year old age range and within
this, children have many development milestones. For example, a two year old
has totally different requirements for learning and entertainment than a 6 year
old, so we needed to produce content that could be enjoyed by all kids and
their parents – something the CBeebies channel has excelled at over the years.
We’ve taken that same approach with Playtime, providing an interactive
experience that all of our audience can enjoy whilst applying the CBeebies
philosophy of 'leaning through play'.

Developing for multiple devices

As many of you know, developing apps for different platforms
and ecosystems is a costly and time-consuming process and as a publicly funded
organisation we have a responsibility to reach as many of our audiences as
possible, in the most cost-effective way. That’s why the initial platforms we
are targeting at launch are Android, iOS and Kindle Fire.

These platforms represent a myriad of different devices
being used in family households across the nation, and developing an
application natively for each device type would also require a huge amount of
resources from developers, designers, producers, project managers and testers.

Our solution was to build one core application based on a
single code base that we could optimise for the required devices. It gave us
the ability to efficiently build very high quality experiences, utilising the
native features of the devices where possible and making the most of their
visual display and audio playback capabilities.

As mentioned, the spread of devices on our target operating
systems is huge. Within this spread there is a large difference in performance,
available memory and screen sizes. It was necessary to make sure the devices
had an optimised asset set that allowed the application to render the graphics
as smoothly as possible, and use only an appropriate amount of memory to do so.

The graphics also had to work in screen size ratios that
varied from squat rectangle to letter box. To accommodate this we implemented a
system of button placement that relates to percentages rather than absolute
positioning. This allows the Playtime app to scale and adapt position to even
the most extreme screen real estate environments.

CBeebies Playtime has been developed so that extra features
and games can be added in seamlessly across all these devices as well, allowing
us to introduce new content and keep the app fresh.

Setting up a user profile

Making the app safe for a dual audience

The basic shape of the proposition is an engaging and
easy-to-use hub based around the idea of a CBeebies world populated by the
famous yellow bugs. The hub provides simple access to high quality branded
games for children, and a grown-ups section giving information about the
application's features, describes the games and their learning benefits, and is
home to the 'Give a Special Message' section.

This is an area that allows parents or carers to choose for
a special message to be delivered to their child - a "Well done" for
being really good today, "Happy Birthday", or even to record a
personal message. The message rewards are delivered the next time a child goes
to the hub. As CBeebies is a dual audience experience where child and
parent/carer engage together, the message reward system is a way of enabling
shared moments.

It is essential that the Playtime app is as safe as possible
for children to play in – like a walled garden that protects children by restricting
access to inappropriate content on the wider internet. To achieve this, all
user journeys that lead out of the app were placed in the grown-ups section,
which is behind a safety feature that requires relatively advanced cognitive
skills.

This section features information for each game, which links
out for more detail on the CBeebies Grown-ups website. Other routes out include
the terms and conditions, privacy statement and extra information – these
destinations are all hosted on the BBC website.

To prevent children from leaving the app, should they click
on any of these links, a number code will need to be entered into a keypad. The
number code is in word form but is entered via numbers, which forms a second
barrier to prevent little hands from straying too far, and has proved highly
effective in user testing.

Implementing learning benefits

The brands included in the app allow for great entertainment
and learning possibilities, which was a major priority for us when developing
the games.

Tree Fu Tom is a massively popular CBeebies brand that has
been exported to numerous countries around the world, and won many awards. Big
World Magic in Tree Fu Tom the TV show incorporates carefully selected
sequences of movement put together by movement specialists and designed to help
children develop important foundation motor skills.

This has been adapted for the touch screen in
"Chuckleberry Chase". Before each game users are invited to tilt
their device (or use their finger) to perform the Big World Magic and thus
enable 'Super Speed'. In the game, the Mushas (protagonists) have stolen all of
the Chuckleberries. To save the Harvest Festival Tom has to fly after them
collecting as many berries as he can while avoiding various obstacles.

The control method, as with the magic scene, is either tilt
or touch. The methods sit alongside each other being interpreted by the device
meaning there are no extraneous options that detract from the user experience.
The use of the controls will help children develop movement skills and fine
motor control at a crucial time in their growth.

Tree Fu Tom saving the harvest festival in Chuckleberry Chase

The Alphablocks are 26 living letters who discover that when
they hold hands and make a word, it comes to life. The series is based on
best-practise phonics as taught in schools. The Alphablocks game 'Word Magic'
is aimed to help young children develop confidence with reading and writing.
The child is invited to spell a word described in a picture. The controls are
either ‘tap to select’ the next letter - which is placed on the pedestal, or
the letters can be dragged and dropped. Spell the word correctly and the scene
explodes into life.

Octonauts is an internationally famous animated series
following the exploits of a team of adventurers, led by Captain Barnacle, who
live in an undersea base. Octonauts 'Cadet Training' is an opportunity for the
user to come and join the team. The game is aimed at helping children develop
an understanding of team-work and to learn more about the world around them,
via a number of missions are in the game - to rescue, save or help different
sea creatures.

To begin each mission Captain Barnacle issues commands that
the player (the cadet) must follow - fail and the submarine (the GUP-A) won't
stay on course. On reaching the destination native features of devices are used
to help complete the mission. The microphone is needed as the Orca whale must
be called for, the trapped hermit crab must have rocks shaken off him and the
touch screen needs to be used in helping a mother lobster collect her offspring
and also at the turtle cleaning station.

Something Special has been a jewel in CBeebies crown for
many years, featuring the hugely popular Mr Tumble and the Tumble family. The
simple format of the show is very inclusive and it is that premise that is
applied to the 'Paint Pop' game. The Tumble family each have an item of
clothing that needs decorating - the game is to pop bubbles so the splashes
colour the items.

A series of Something Special games on the CBeebies website
have iterated our knowledge of inclusive gaming and best practise. Here in
Paint Pop we have included settings that are customisable by a parent or carer.
The input methods can be tapping of the touch screen, switch control or noise
control via microphone. Other settings allow for simplification of the
gameplay, audio playback and button display.

Inclusive gaming with Something Special Paint Pop

The building of the app was a fully collaborative process,
involving a BBC team comprising of an editorial producer, product manager,
project manager, user experience lead, testers and researchers, all working
very closely with development agency Mobile Pie.

It was built in an agile manner based on user focussed
design. User testing was carried out throughout the project lifecycle with the
results feeding back into the development iterations. This really helped us to
make informed adjustments to the build, the user journeys and the game designs.

With technology now firmly embedded in children's lives it
creates amazing new opportunities to develop digital services for them. This
allows us to find new ways of informing, educating and entertaining a
generation of tech-savvy children in a safe environment that parents can trust.

We think we’ve struck the right balance with this app and
we’d love to hear your feedback in the comments.

Jon Howard,

Executive Product Manager, Children’s Future Media.

What's on BBC Red Button 10 - 17 August

The festival season continues here on the Red Button with Edinburgh
taking its turn in the limelight. CBeebies ramps up its summer holiday
offerings with Big Fun Time and Tree Fu Tom to keep the little ones occupied
and there is plenty of action from the Athletics World Championship throughout
the week.

Keep up with all the latest news by following us on Twitter
@BBCRedButton

Sue Perkins at Edinburgh

Edinburgh 2013

Sue Perkins presents highlights from
The Edinburgh Festival including an interview with and exhibition by
artist Peter Doig whose work has sold for a record-breaking $11.3 million.
Legendary New York theatre company The Wooster Group present their take on
Hamlet, with the ghostly presence of Richard Burton. There’s an exclusive film
of Scottish Ballet's Dance Odysseys and a selection of the best comedy from the
Fringe this year.

Available
on all platforms

Sun 11 August, 8.55pm – 10pm

Mon 12 August, 1.35am – 6am, 11.30pm – 6am

Wed 14 August, 7pm – 6am

Thu 15 August, 10.25pm – 6am

Friday 16 10.25pm – 6am

 

Perri Shakes-Drayton, Mo Farah, Christine Ohuruogu and James Dasaolu
 

This weekend’s sport highlights

Watch the best of the Athletics
World Championships with highlights on Saturday. You can catch up with
what you’ve missed daily with replays of evening sessions throughout the week.

There’s news and action from
rugby league's Super League Show and the Football
League Show is on Saturday night and Sunday morning incase you miss the
original outing. 

 Available on all platforms  

 

Note that live sport event times are subject to change. For
more information on this week's sport on Red Button, visit the BBC Sport website. 

 

Big Fun Time

Press red this summer for
Big Fun Time! Watch Alex as he goes on an adventure with Jem and
the naughty Swashbuckle pirates aboard the Scarlet Squid, join in with a
special Nina and the Neurons experiment and sing along to the Big Fun Time
song.

Available on all platforms

Sat 10 August,
6am – 6pm

Sun 11 August, 12pm – 7pm

Mon 12 August, 6am – 11am, 12pm – 1pm, 3pm – 7.30pm

Tue 13 August, 6am – 2.30pm, 4pm – 6.45pm

Wed 14 August, 6am – 7pm

Thu 15 August, 6am – 7pm

Fri 16 August, 6am – 12pm, 1pm – 7pm

Top of the Lake

Go behind the scenes with Top
of the Lake creator Jane
Campion. In this personal and insightful exploration, discover how against all
odds, the creative spirit can sing. Discover the themes at the heart of the Top
of the Lake story and how they compare to artistic processes in filmmaking elsewhere.

Available on all platforms

Sat 10 August,
10.05pm – 12:53am

Sun 17 August, 10.05pm – 1.10am  

 

Live Lounge  

Radio 1’s Live Lounge TV brings you the very best in stripped back live music performances
from the world-famous Live Lounge. This month Alice Levine has Robin Thicke,
Queens of the Stone Age, Vampire Weekend, Crystal Fighters and Nina Nesbitt
performing their own songs and some truly incredible cover versions.

Available on all platforms

 

Sun 11 August, 7.30pm – 8.55pm  

 

Tree Fu Tom  

Help Tom to save the day by joining in with this exclusive
spell-along service. Alex shows you how to create your very own magic belt just
like Tom’s, made from everyday items you’ll find around the house. You can join
in and sing along to the Tree Fu Tom theme tune with a special karaoke version
that has words on screen. Get into your spell pose and follow Tom and the
children on screen to perform Big World Magic.

Available on all platforms

Sat 17 August,
6am – 9am, 1pm – 2.30pm, 6pm – 6.30pm  

Scottish Referendum: Connected Studio Brief

Hello I’m Mo McRoberts and I’m part of the team that helps to organise Connected Studio events here at BBC Scotland. 

Connected Studio is a digital innovation programme that works with teams across the BBC to deliver fresh, new, digital features and formats.

On 18th September 2014 a referendum will be held in Scotland. Voters will be asked to vote yes or no on the question: "Should Scotland be an independent country?”

This is not only a historic vote because the outcome could fundamentally alter the nature of the United Kingdom, but also because 16 and 17 year olds will be able to vote for the first time.

It was for this reason we thought it an excellent opportunity for the Connected Studio to look at ideas to help the BBC reach a younger audience who may not be engaged with news and current affairs, particularly surrounding politics and political issues, and who have never had the opportunity to vote before.

The Connected Studio team helps people get together and generate ideas on the day

The event will be held at BBC Scotland’s headquarters in Glasgow on the 17th of September 2013 with the aim of generating ideas that will make the stories and issues of the referendum accessible and meaningful to younger audiences

Below is the single challenge which we have set out in the event’s Innovation Brief(PDF).If you think you can help us solve it then we’d love to hear from you—Connected Studio is open to a wide variety of Digital agencies, freelancers and Start-ups with a focus on creative or technical and whether you've worked with the BBC previously or not doesn’t matter.

You can find out more about Connected Studio, or apply to take part in the Creative Studio for Scotland’s Referendum, via the Connected Studio website.

The Challenge

Next year’s Referendum on Scottish Independence offers 16 and 17 year olds in Scotland an opportunity to vote for the first time. The BBC is committed to helping all audiences understand the issues surrounding the debate on Scotland’s future. Given traditional coverage of politics can sometimes be perceived, particularly by younger audiences, as complicated and not relevant to them, we want you to consider new ways of communicating with audiences which empowers them to make an informed choice in the referendum.

In meeting this challenge, we’d like you to think about:—

• The use of digital technologies to reach those who don’t usually come to the BBC for news and current affairs, and may be put off by politics and the surrounding jargon.

• Helping people to identify issues which are personally relevant to them, find answers to their questions about the referendum, and feel empowered by having a say.

• Giving people a confident understanding of the voting process and its lasting legacy.

• The BBC’s duty to provide comprehensive, balanced and impartial coverage throughout the whole referendum period.

Finally, can your proposition have a legacy beyond the referendum—for example, as part of local, national or European election coverage in the future?

Mo McRoberts is an Analyst in BBC Archive Development and part of the Connected Studio team for BBC Scotland.

Linked Data Connected Studio

Hi, I'm Oli Bartlett, product manager for the BBC's Linked Data Platform.

Two weeks ago we ran an internal Connected Studio focused on the Linked Data Platform and 'people'.

The Linked Data Platform is a system designed to connect together the BBC's online content through the things of interest to our audience. My blog post has more information on how we do this.

There are some core things which capture users' interest no matter what BBC website they're looking at, or what type of content they're consuming. The most important of these is people. Whether it's people in the news, people in our radio and tv programmes or people in history, they can provide a common thread though much of the content we publish.

BBC teams at the linked data Connected Studio

The two aims of the event were to get a better understanding of how we can use 'people' to tie together BBC content online, and to put the Linked Data Platform through its paces.

Unlike previous Connected Studios, there was less of a focus on idea generation and more of an opportunity for BBC teams to really concentrate on using our production APIs and data to build on existing ideas and prototypes. We had representation from many of the 10 products across the BBC, including News, Sport, Radio, TV, Knowledge & Learning, Search and Children's which made this different again from previous events. It was much more about collaborating and sharing ideas than competing and pitching.

Prior to the event we loaded a significant amount of data into the platform. We harvested content and its related people from numerous sources around the BBC and loaded over 84,000 content items and references to 30,000 people into the platform. This (so far as I'm aware) was the first time such a breadth of content from disparate systems had been made available through one common API.

We also built some experimental features and tools on the platform such as a SPARQL endpoint (allowing people to run arbitrary queries on the store), a co-occurence API (to allow you to find, for any person, who is most commonly mentioned alongside them) and a tagging tool to allow teams to add more tagged content to the platform to help enrich their products as they were building.

For the event we chose to spin up a number of instances (one per team) of the platform in the cloud. This setup made operations very easy - recovery or reverting to a previous instance of the data or APIs was possible at the click of a button.

Part of a slide from the linked data Connected Studio

Given the time constraint compared with previous Connected Studios (this was a two day event) the outputs from the two days were very impressive. A couple of the highlights for me were:

 * A way to highlight people in News and Sport articles (and even in pictures) and allow the user to quickly find out a little more information about that person and to link to other BBC content featuring them. This used our Core API to pull in the latest content about a person. It showed how with relatively little development work, you could transform an existing piece of content into something much more engaging by simply using the data available.

 * A tool for creating 'people' in the system and made them available for others to tag with them. The interesting piece here was how the prototype dealt with emerging concepts (new people in the news for example) and how to manage scenarios where different people around the BBC create the same person but using different names (to take a recent example, "The Royal Baby" vs "Prince George of Cambridge"). This is one of the difficult problems we are trying to solve with the platform - that of creating the tools and processes for disparate teams across the BBC to share and manage a single evolving vocabulary of terms.

Sometimes in BBC Future Media we come across technical or editorial challenges which can only be solved with engagement from across the division. This event demonstrated how much enthusiasm there is for tackling the big problems and working together. As with most events, there are a few things we'd tweak next time, but in general it was a hugely successful day and we are already planning the next one (Linked Data and Places anyone?).

Oli Barlett is product manager, BBC Linked Data platform