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This Just In…

Client: Channel 4
Launch: September 2010
URL: http://thisjustin.channel4.com/
This Just In… was a comedy website co-developed with Zeppotron, Endemol UK’s comedy production company for Channel 4. The site was commissioned following a successful pitch.The brief was to create an online comedy property that could be fast moving and reactive to events in the real world and would be a showcase to for new comedy talent. Channel 4 are always looking for the next big talent to reach their television audiences, so this onlne project was a perfect way of getting access to hot new talent. The commission was unusual for a website in that it was to be run only for a fixed amount of time, in our case 12 weeks,Our concept was to create a service with a team of comedians writing topical jokes, articles and pictures throughout the day and publishing these through the This Just In… website. This content would be supported by original video content (also on topical themes). Users of the site would then be encouraged to consume information in formats which they were interested in or found convenient. The site was designed so that content was easily shareable and embeddable, and users could follow the jokes and site activity on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, RSS and from the site itself.The site ran from September through to November 2010 and generated a good amount of interest and followers, we were able to learn a lot about making content suited to different social network, however the short run nature of the site meant that it did not recieve the amount of marketing we would have liked, and this in turn meant that the overall numbers did not reach our expectations. That said C4 were very happy with the content and several of the new acts showcased on the site have since appeared on TV, so the project was considered a success.

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Deal Or No Deal Live

Deal or No Deal Live is a multiplayer game of the hit TV show. Up to 18 players play against the Banker and each other to take the best deals and come out with the most money in consecutive games. It’s a highly social game with tight integration with Facebook and a lively community of users that make full use of the integrated chat and gifting system.

I originally developed the format for DoND Live in 2007, but it actually started as a gambling game concept and originally pitched to UK gaming companies as a additional game for bingo audience, however it seem at that time to be too much of an unknown quantity for them and they were reluctant to invest in it.

I had already hired uber-boffin Tom Newton (@tomnewton) to help work on the project and between us worked out that the game could be published on Facebook as a social game. Tom came to us with some existing technology he had developed to run poker games and this was modified to become a scaleable social gaming platform running on Amazon’s EC2 platform.

Our original plan was to roll out DoND Live to the US market then build revenue streams, including virtual goods, into the game, however various rights issues meant this would not be possible. The game remains live however, but UK focused only, and the technology developed has proved to be a great success, so much so that one of our key partners in the gambling space Gamesys bought the platform from Endemol to create a new social gaming startup iwi, which Tom still heads up today.

Client: Endemol UK
Launched: Dec 2009
URL: http://apps.facebook.com/dealornodeallive

Jet Set Radio - Web Enabled Game

Web Enabled games

Web-enabled games were Dreamcast games that included the Dreamkey browser and could connect to the Internet via Dreamarena, thus allowing for uploads of high-scores, downloads of codes to unlock new areas of the game etc.

The Web-enabled games needed to follow the look and feel of the game itself and the Dreamarena house style, and as such I had overall responsibility in signing off designs submitted to SEGA and for the production and design of SEGA published Web-enabled games, such as Jet Set Radio.

Client: SEGA Europe
Launch: 2001
URL: No longer live
toy_racer quake

ROAR

Client: BBC
Launch: March 2010
URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/roar/

ROAR was originally developed by Endemol for series 1 of the show back in 2006, it’s key innovation was the inclusion of ‘Cheat Codes’ – released in the show itself these codes would unlock new items and features in the game. As a result this tamagotchi style animal rearing game proved to be a massive success on the CBBC website.In 2009 the BBC decided to commission an overhaul of the game so that it could be made to work with their new Games Grid platform and to provide some new environments, animals, treats and of course cheat codes – enough to span across 2 series, 50 episodes.

I worked with agency Fish In a Bottle to produce the game, which involved a complete rebuild of the Flash and considerable technical challenges working with new technology from the BBC.

Australian Balloon Adventure

The Australian Balloon Adventure was a interactive map developed to support the Tiger Aspect produced ITV show of the same name, it was available for short time and provided additional infomation about the show and locations highlighted in the trip, this included blogs and a video diary of footage that did not make into the show itself.
Client: ITV
Launch: August 2010
URL: no longer live

Nissan CD rom + Website

CD Rom (remember those?) developed for direct marketing purposes, to provide information about up coming line of cars. I also produced a marketing microsite for Nissan vans, which included an interactive Van Selector that allowed users to determine which Nissan van was right for them by selecting various criteria.
Client: Nissan
Launch: April 2005
URL: no longer available

Vodafone live website

I worked as Producer and Creative Director on this project to refresh the look and feel of the existing Vodafone live! website in readiness of global launch of 3G data services. The site was to graphically overhauled and a styleguide developed, the intention being that this site would service new and existing 2.5G customers whilst bringing local market versions of the site back in line with the global branding initiatives for Vodafone live!The site makes extensive use of flash demonstrations of the Vodafone live service in action, it was felt that this would be an important means of demystifying the live service for new and existing users alike. The underlying concept was to move on from simply explaining what features like ‘picture messaging’ were and to show just how much easier these things are to do with Vodafone live!

The site was delivered as a kit of parts alongside a styleguide document, this was then offered to each of Vodafone’s local market operators to implement and extend as they saw fit. This was necessary as often the local markets had very different requirements, and in many cases offered differing services.

One of the core aims of the project was to give the various global markets the means to bring their versions of the Vodafone live! website back on-brand whilst still retaining much of the integration with existing CMS structures. I wrote the Vodafone live! 2.5G styleguide to provide the creative and technical instructions, not only to implement the site, but to extend it to suit a variety of purposes.

Client: Vodafone
Launch: September 2004
URL: No longer live

Dreamkey 2

Shortly after the re-design of Dreamarena a new version of the Dreamkey browser was released in Japan, this provided a good opportunity to update the look and feel of the European browser software to better reflect the new design of Dreamarena (the software also had other enhancements that required its release in Europe).I worked managing a newly formed team of in-house designers at SEGA in it’s production.

Client: SEGA Europe
Launch: 1999
URL: No longer live

William Hill Betlive

As part of Endemol Gaming I designed and produced a live betting application for the UK bookmaker William Hill. Endemol already had some experience in working in this area having built similar applications for Ladbrokes and Sportingbet, however this was my first.

The live betting application was built in Flash with the aim of stimulating betting activity by providing a highly reactive rich user experience that could keep up the drama of live sporting events. It was designed to pull in data feeds and video that would display an up-to-the-second information to the punter.

This project formed part of huge internal project within William Hill to shift their entire online operations and back-office systems from their own in-house developed platform to OpenBet, the most popular betting platform in the UK. They chose to re-brand and redesign their website at the same time and take the opportunity to enhance their online live betting experience too.

Our solution was originally designed to be one flash file, loaded once and cached, that would provide dynamic menus, betting market information and scoreboards. This betting app. could then be loaded into sport and competition pages whenever events were live  always provide the appropriate information. Integration of streaming video player and radio player ensured that visitors to the site had full entertainment experience complement the event. In many ways the application was a victim of its own success in that William Hill wanted to run so many markets against live events that we reached the very limits of what Flash is able to display within a browser (if you’re interested, it’s about 4000px height!), so these sections and the dynamic menus were redeveloped by William Hill to be displayed in more flexible Ajax/HTML. However the dynamic scoreboards are still in place and used whenever events go live.

Client: William Hill
Launch: Aug 2008
URL: http://sports.williamhill.com/bet/en-gb/betlive/all

Betlive page mockup

MTV Kim Collins website

adidas and MTV came together to promote Caribbean sports hero Kim Collins with a series of TV programs and features including a competition to win a week in Collins’ home island of St Kitts, I produced the competition microsite. It was built in Flash and linked to a competition database. The look and feel of the site was a continuation of the above the line TV spots developed in-house by MTV; it was intended to have a rough-cut collage effect. Visitors were treated to a specially created reggae tune that was streamed into the site.
Client: adidas
Launch: June 2004
URL: no longer available
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