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iTV

CapaTV’s “OFFtv” > script, interface, interactivity design

client: CapaTV, France

what IS iTV?

project details
The mapping out of both the events in the script and the production of the program’s various elements were a major part of our proposal for this iTV program.

broadcast/online
co-production timeline

episode timeline and interactivity map

These are prototype screens for one episode of an interactive women's variety show, featuring interactive shopping, dating, advice, games and contests.

CAPA TV : project process

Knowing the platform: the potential client came to us with a rough script they wanted to develop for Microsoft TV.

Creating interactivity: through a series of often hilarious brainstorming sessions, our team of interface designers, usability experts and content developers ran amuck with the script and created new concepts, characters, games, television programmes and marketing concepts based on the women's talk show presented in the rough script.

Selling the concepts: the team wrote a completed script for a 30 minute television program, created visual prototypes to show a sample of the consumer-facing product, and timelines to show both how the interactivity would work within the program, and how the various interactive and television production teams would create the proposed iTV product.

Favorable results: the presentation of the work created by the team resulted in the client signing a three-year joint venture with our then parent company, e-City.

Interactive television is a fairly new technology and is described differently depending on who you ask. To consumers, interactive television is digital TV - television delivered with a digital signal (through cable or satellite) that includes extras like an on-screen programming guide or possibly even the ability to play games, make purchases, interact with a program or surf the web on your television.

To corporations, broadcasters and the advertising industry, interactive television combines the data-mining available from credit card companies, internet service operators and website publishers with the awesome selling power of television. In this light, interactive television can be seen strategically as

the efforts of large omnimedia companies to
streamline marketing opportunities
by gathering sufficient technology and media outlets to
deliver certain products and marketing to
narrow markets or demographics (narrowcasting) via
multi-channel broadcasting
(TV, digital cable, wireless networks, telephony, Internet, PDA, DVR).

iTV may help advertisers in the future to get their message to a more and more specifically defined target audience. So, iTV is new, but the strategy is not. The gadgets, and the size and breadth of the networks are what's new. As we have seen in the past, advertising (and sex) usually cut the edge for new technologies. TV itself was borne on the wings of soap manufacturers, and pornography made the VCR incredibly popular.

What better place to explore concepts of the new soap operas of the digital age than a city full of digerati, cutting edge art schools and prostitutes (Amsterdam)? Here is a brief list of functions I performed in 1999-2001 for the internal and external clients of an iTV consulting firm called e-City located in the Netherlands.

CapaTV: analysis of script | remapping and creative development of material to iTV platform | content localization | sample program template/timeline | iTV production timeline