Second Screens - Blending TV and the web

Second screens bring rich TV interactivity finally into the mainstream. However, there are many pitfalls when implementing great second screen experiences. Foremost the mental and technological gap between program makers and (web) developers needs to be bridged.

Who should you design for? How can we hook into the traditional TV production chain? What works and truly augments the story told on the first screen. What’s a fad? Supported by data that was gathered from over 200 TV shows.

Presented at MOBX Berlin 16th of Movember 2012

Transcript

1. hendrik@smalltownheroes.be www.smalltownheroes.be Hi I am Hendrik, I run a startup called Small Town Heroes
2. We’re making second screen apps for TV programs and visualize all the realtime data in the live TV show.
3. Second Screens - Blending TV and the web He i D c i But I am here to talk about second screens. And how TV and the web might be blended to create a new visual language.
4. MY DAD This  is  a  picture  of  my  dad,  my  dad  used  to  be  an  old  school  journalist.  
5. Heavily  smoking  over  his  typewriter.  True  Mad  Men  style.  He  was  constantly  busy  calling  people,  asking  rough  ques=ons.  I  am  just  assuming  this.
6. The man was rough on me,
7.  I  assume  he  was  also  rough  on  poli=cians  and  demeaning  people.  
8. He  gathered  data  and  hard  evidence  in  order  to  tell  breaking  stories.  Every  week  his  work  was  published,  not  in  the  Huffington  Post  but  in  a  well  regarded  local  newspaper.  Why  I  am  telling  all   this?  Besides  my  father's  preference  for  Belgian  beers  and  MILFS,  I  share  with  him  the  genes  
9. HIS GENES that code for collecting data and telling great stories.
10. REALLY, HIS GENES I diverted from this genetically predetermined path when I enlisted at the University to study a Medicine and Biology.
11. Together with my Biology degree and a print-out of my first website I was able to secure a job at Alcatel, a high-tech multinational that marketed itself as "the internet company."
12. RESEARCH It was fun time. It was the perfect playground, I worked really hard on new TV experiences and social TV prototypes.
13. One of the things we learned is that user interface is key. I also made horrible TV interfaces. Our wings of imagination were clipped by sluggish, energy absorbing, closed platforms, running on a 80386 processor.
14. Aka the set-top-box.
15. True, not as ugly as today’s smart tv’s but still...ugly
16. BROADCASTER Swapped jobs and went working for a TV broadcaster. First couple of years
17. SAD PANDA I wasn't happy.
18. We were Internet geeks hired to reinvent television. Yet, the company housed us not only in a different building but also in a different city. The first two years I worked a new media guy, I never talked to a program maker.
19. BREAKTHROUGH In 2010 I got my first meeting with a content guy. Just because we had a similar taste of music and were friends on Last.FM.
20. "The future of TV won’t be here until people who make TV are in these conversations!" J c S i Broadcasters don't talk to technology people and technology people are not really listening to broadcasters. Sure, they're is a lot of technological innovations by second screen app makers. And there are beautiful designs too. But are they
21. ARE THEY MISSING THE POINT? not missing the point? Sure...
22. I can discover recommended content
23. I can "checkin" to media
24. I can tweet seamlessly about the show
25. can have live curated activity streams
26. can consult rich, related metadata
27. synced with the stream
28. over-the-top
29. integrated with my Xbox
30. receive auto-generated zee tags
31. voice controlling my TV. SURE. But.. what do the Broadcasters get?
32. They get demographic and sentiment information from Social interactions.
33. A whole technology hype cycle to generate better CRM, instead of better stories.
34. EYEBALLS Sure, Eyeballs are the glue of the TV business but story always go first. You guys are Information architects, so you must know that.
35. I keep asking to myself. Did these ever have sit-down with the television makers?
36. Demo FIRST STEPS AND FALSE ALARMS One of the first second screen projects I worked on was a companion app for TV programs, Zeebox style.
37. People could check-in, have aggregated activity streams,
38. FEATURITIS consult rich, related metadata. Usual second screen featuritis. It wasn't a success
39. SCHIZOPHRENIC It addressed two types of users but neither really well.
40. FAMILY TV VIEWER #1 The family TV viewers, who really wanted to participate with the show. They were asking questions to the guests, wanted to have an impact on the narrative.
41. TV CRITIC #2 The over served Social commentators who like to comment and discuss
42. IT’S NOT ABOUT THIS It's not about building a better water-cooler, it's about building new stories based on a fundamentally different relationship between viewers and creators.
43. "TV isn’t about work, it isn’t about search, it isn’t about finding things and effort - it’s about escape." Je e T e The user really is the TV viewer. Who knows this user best is not Nielsen. It's the program makers. So in order to succeed at making great experiences for TV we'll need to take them into the equation.
44. Thou shall not create second screen experiences as an afterthought.
46. LOOK, SOME TIPS
47. #1 SIMPLICITY They need to be simple
49. 49 TOO DIFFICULT
50. #2 ADD VALUE Must be valuable for all viewers.
51. CLOSE THE FEEBACK LOOP Close the feedback loop
52. TOO LOW
53. #3 SOCIAL IS A FEATURE Social is a feature, not the goal.
54. #4 EXPLORE EARLY Second screen elements should be explored at the planning stage, Digital teams and creative teams should be put together.
56. #5 NO FAIL WHALES It must be scalable, never fail, just like what we'd expect from TV
57. trailer 1 call to action call to action #6 TWIN PEAKS
58. #7 MAKE MORE MONEY The business might not be that scalable. we must say NO to the generic poll. Like good TV, it should be tailor made. Who said second screen had to be cheap.
59. #8 BE CREATIVE
60. #9 must be creative
61. It must blend with the story told on the first screen
62. But foremost they must be crafted together with the storytellers, the dreamers. When technology really helped storytellers forward, it was of symbiotic nature.
63. MY DAD Because  truly,  we  need  to  craM  new  narra=ves.   We  have  to  put  back  storytellers,  like  my  father,  in  front  of  the  viewer
64. THANK YOU
65. hendrik@smalltownheroes.be www.smalltownheroes.be @studiomuscle