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I’ve been posting a bit about the process of architecting the new online video on demand offering from Channel4. Well, it’s now live on channel4.com!

4od on Channel 4

I love this point in a project, when you see the fruits of your labour come to fruition and you get that sense of pride at looking at something that you’ve created and designed. It’s also interesting looking at the progression of ideas from the first sketchy wireframes to the clickable prototypes (which we tested with), the high fidelity designs to what is now live. While not everything that we had planned went in to this first release, we are really proud of what we’ve created here – I know that I am!

I hope you all enjoy the vast quantity and quality of content here – please feel free to let me know of good and bad things and things you think we can make better!

Sorry about the job posting, but I need to recruit a freelance IA quickly to supplement the team here at Channel 4. By quickly I mean that I’m looking to shortlist by Tuesday, June 9th and offer on Wednesday, June 10th! It’s quite a short contract for a project that landed quickly! Here’s the job posting:

Dear Friends,

Channel 4 Future Media are looking for an experienced IA to join us for a 1 – 2 week contract. The project is a redesign of an entertainment website. Experience of working in a media environment would be an advantage.

We are looking for someone to start on June 15th. £neg, depending on experience.

If you are interested please get in contact with us as soon as possible, we are looking to select by June 10th. Please email your CV, a link to some portfolio work and your desired day rate to Alex Horstmann (ahorstmann at channel4 dot co dot uk) and Stephen Hardingham (shardingham at channel4 dot co dot uk).

Sorry, no agencies!

Cheers!

Alex Horstmann
User Experience Manager
Channel 4 Television

So, if you, or someone you know, may be interested, please let us know!

Wireframe of the new programme video page (Click to enlarge)

I’ve been really enjoying the last couple of months at work! I enjoying working in general, but lately I’ve been engrossed in a really meaty and fun project – sculpting the user experience of our new video proposition, which I mentioned in my previous post, The Problem with Online Video.

I talked about the issue we had with pop-up players not sitting well with our advertising policies. We’ve refined the solution a little more to make it more usable. Now, users will be able to launch the pop-out directly from the video list. We can’t get around the fact that the user needs to make that decision before watching, but it’s a click less to get to playing video now.

With the introduction of archive video, rather than just the last 30 days catch-up video, we have been working hard on the findability of video. (more…)

Wow! It’s been a while since I’ve penned a blog post; but this isn’t down to laziness or lethargy! I’ve been really busy here at Channel 4 working on our video propisition. A week ago we launched our  online 30 day catch-up service, but that isn’t where it ends. Ever since Project Kangaroo, the video on demand collaboration between the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, was canned by the Competition Commission we have been working on our own solution for getting of our archive content online; and I’ve been doing all the IA/UX work on it!

It’s been a really interesting and exciting project to work on, making a user-friendly video proposal that will fit into the current Channel 4 site without too much impact, while making sure video is simple to find and watch. I think that the solution we’re implementing meets those goals. One challenge was making sure that Video home page did not get too catch-up centric and promoted archive material adequately. While the main user goal is catch-up, our current 4oD service shows us that archive material is becoming more and more popular.

But there’s a problem when you come to design a particular aspect of the online video user experience: advertising.

(more…)

Heatmap of the Channel4.com homepage (click to enlarge)

Many people have been asking me to share more of the results of our user testing on channel4.com. I posted my initial takeaways from the testing and also posted about the methodology we used of mixing eye tracking with qualitative user testing techniques.

Methodology

We captured the initial 30 seconds of eye movements (using a Tobii Eye Tracker) to get an insight into the initial fixation points on the page and what elements users looked at first. We then carried out traditional qualitative task based testing on that page, still tracking eye movements.

The initial 30 seconds of eye tracking information was aggregated into traditional heatmaps for the pages we tested. The note takers in the observation room noted the eye movements during the task based testing.

(more…)