You’ve subscribed to a service that provides you with TV programming. But multi-platform person that you are, you want that TV content available on whatever platform you want (iPods and smartphones and tablets of every kind with room for whatever’s coming up in our digital future). Not just that, you want access to the complete library of content that your service holds. And you want it now. Like on-demand now. Not to mention, oh yes, you may have forgotten that you wanted to record your favourite program and you’d like to program your set top box (STB) to record it, but you’re 150 miles away. You’re already a subscriber: why can’t you have what you’re already paying for when you want it and the way you want it?
You can. If you’re lucky enough to be in area where the TELUS Optik is available.
While TELUS is one of Canada’s premier telecommunications companies in land-line, mobile, and Internet services, it is a new player on the TV scene. This means it wasn’t bound by the constraints of legacy systems.The company made the insightful choice to provide TV services over Internet protocol (ipTV). This permits 2-way communication between home and service, opening the door to more interactive and personalized TV features. Not to mention allowing TELUS to align its TV offering better with viewers’ behaviours and desires and to connect it with other devices using the same protocol, including computer Web browsers, smartphones, and tablets.
With Telus Optik, you get complete content access from virtually any device and you can perform remote programming. Put it this way: with Optik from TELUS, whatever’s in there (in your TV) you can get out there (the big, wide world outside your living room).
Although they have a ways to go in building market share, TELUS still managed to double its number of TV subscribers in 2010 while the Canadian market as a whole grew less than 4%(1).
“Especially on complex, multi-layered, and multi-faceted projects like this one, it’s important to do a great deal of critical thinking up front. Jumping too early into application development, encountering a roadblock, and being forced to rethink part or all of the process is a time-consuming and very expensive exercise.”
How did LVL contribute to the TELUS Optik program? LVL is the principal design firm for the TELUS TV (Optik) program, responsible for the overall user experience of this service. We redesigned the GUI and defined the brand identity for everything related to TV (including Web, mobile, and tablet applications for TV). We designed new features/apps, including the Musicroom screen that consolidates digital audio channels, a remote video scheduling application, a multi-platform VOD/DVR/Live TV application, a “channel zapping” application to let users preview and flip between channels, and the GUI for the TV service running on Xbox.
Because of our long-standing relationship, we’ve also worked on other TELUS TV platforms including iMagic, Minerva, and Echo Star (Dish Network).
Our involvement runs the gamut of product cycle activities: LVL is TELUS’s product design authority for TV, providing program management consulting, conceptual design of new products and services, brand guidelines and GUI design services, programming of applications, and testing for performance and usability.
Subscribers can even watch TV and rent movies on the Xbox in addition to their smartphones, tablets, the Web, and TV. Edge devices have their own standards and expectations. So creating a common Optik experience across device-specific interfaces and experiential expectations was a bit like the Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts slogan “Fifty Hotels. Twenty-Two Countries. One Philosophy.”
Tired of scrolling through endless channels to find your favourite radio station? LVL designed Musicroom to create an interface where radio stations are grouped in categories such as genre, name, city, or AM/FM frequency. Just a few clicks to get in the groove with sound on the Hi-Fi…or on the WiFi, if you happen to be out of home. That’s an accomplishment of note.
TELUS wanted to build on its strong brand identity and ensure that its promise of “The future is friendly” was reflected in its TV offering. LVL helped customize the graphical user interface (GUI) to brand it as a TELUS product, optimizing screen text and layout to better organize and simplify the complex nature of the vast amount of information available.
The Program Guide was customized and improved. Information was organized according to importance, channel logos were added for quick recognition, and channels were grouped into clusters such as Sports, Family, and Lifestyle.
Deciding what movie to rent can be done on a tablet without interrupting the show being watched. Viewers can browse and purchase movies on their iPad and XOOM tablets, then watch it on TV once the popcorn and sodas are ready.
Client: TELUS
Release date: 2009 to present
