Interactive Television
2005 - 2010
As Creative Director at Navic Networks (which became Navic: a Microsoft Company in 2008), I worked with clients to design and launch Interactive TV experiences built on Navic’s platform, which ran on the early-generation digital settop boxes of the day.
Projects were a mix of interactive elements layered over TV programming, advertising “microsites” that could be triggered from commercials, and apps that could be launched from a menu in the settop box UI. Clients included some of the country’s largest cable operators, major broadcast and cable networks, and brand name advertisers. The projects shown here are a mix of fully-deployed products and “art of the possible” concepts.
Many Navic projects were “Voting and Polling” experiences overlaid on top of live or pre-recorded programs. For these types of engagements, I served as both design lead and client-facing program manager. I worked with the networks’ production or marketing teams to design and create content that matched the look-and-feel of the show, led Navic’s team producing each episode’s interactivity to sync with the program, and reported both technical and viewer engagement results to network and cable company executives after each airing. Although the viewer experience of these projects was quite simple, the nascent technology and arcane infrastructure meant operation and deployment was rather complex and, quite frankly, prone to error. Those morning-after status meetings were a bit nerve-wracking.
Navic also produced full-screen interactive experiences that were not tied to linear programming. “The Rookie” was a series of web shorts set in the universe of the hit series “24.” We deconstructed the Flash version built by another agency and created this to run on low-end digital settop boxes.
Concept ITV Apps
As a B2B start-up, Navic often went the extra mile to pitch our technology to potential clients. These are demo apps that we put together for various sales presentations and trade shows.
These are video mockups of products that could have been built on Navic’s ITV application platform. For these projects, I worked with our business development and sales teams to define the product features and led a small design team in producing these demos.
2008 Olympics
Unfortunately some of my favorite projects never came to fruition. These are mockups for an app we proposed to build for NBC’s coverage of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
