BBC Life

Background: the BBC Natural History Unit has 15,000 hours of rushes, 4,000 hours of radio and a growing archive of animal CGI models. This is largely unseen by the public. Plans for digitisation and meta-tagging were to vastly increase it’s potential for use.

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Innovation opportunities: The NHU wanted to offer up this archive to the public in new and exciting ways. They wanted to draw in audiences beyond their traditional reach.

I managed a project to deliver a portfolio of ideas.

Audience Insight: we began with research to understand which type of natural history programmes appealed to different audiences (age 13 - 75) and which technology platforms (current and near future) these audience groups were most likely to use.

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Ideation: we explored many ways that content could be categorised and organised (evolutionary, by species, geography, habitat, seasons) and how each IA may appeal to different audiences.

We then developed specific ideas for particular demographic groups on the platforms that would most appeal.

From 10 ideas presented back to the client the team went on to build a prototype for childrens’ interactive TV - ‘Jungle Quest’ and to further explore immersive museum experiences for families.

(see Immersive Environments section)

Jungle Quest concept: mission style game for interactive TV aimed at 9-12 year olds. A level based game each stage requiring a deeper understanding of natural history gained through downloaded video content.

The multi-player option was competitive but also required co-operation through trading and knowledge sharing.