´óÏó´«Ã½

Can you sum up Essential Classics: Interactive Edition in a sentence?

A classical music radio show where at certain moments during the programme, the presenter invites you to choose alternative content that you can listen to, if you want to, by pressing a brand new ‘swap’ button.

What is the aim of this project?

The idea is to offer people more choice and control over their listening experience, whilst keeping the classic linear broadcast at the heart of it. By offering users the chance to optionally swap elements of the show in and out, they are able to explore different ‘threads’ of content, whilst maintaining the ‘lean back’ nature of radio that we know they love.

How did this project come about?

The project was originally conceived of in a classical music-themed workshop by ´óÏó´«Ã½ UX designer David Ullman, as an idea to allow people to keep listening to the content that interests them the most, even when the theme on the main radio thread may change. This has eventually evolved into a format whereby a user may optionally take alternative content journeys within one episode, which is what you can see here.

How was it made?

At the heart of the content plan was the aspiration to stay true to the way that we produce the Essential Classics radio show for its daily slot on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 3, yet extend the format to offer new content that builds on the features that we normally run on the show. It was exciting to envisage ways that each of the show’s elements could be extended and explored. For example we wanted to show another side to our guest, actor Julian Glover; plus it was a great opportunity to explore our featured artists in far more detail than usual through creating a special documentary. It was very important for us that the interactivity was integrated into the format of the show, rather than be simply bolted on.

In terms of the interface, we knew it should be easy to use; yet make use of layout, colour, animation and audio to meaningfully illustrate the content structure and support user interaction.

We also had to be mindful of the fact that radio listeners will often be preoccupied with other tasks while listening to the radio in the background. Therefore, one of the key things that we worked on was addressing the situation where somebody may be listening, but not looking at the website. Through a series of rapid design iterations our radio and digital teams collaborated to develop a product which was underpinned by clear signposting, such as the presenter delivering a clear, verbal call to action when announcing interactive moments, accompanied by a distinctive, purpose-built sound effect. For users who are not actively viewing the website, there are also clickable notifications that pop up, visually alerting and reducing the barrier for them to interact.

What was interesting about working on it?

It was an interesting challenge to be able to extend the content in different directions - exploring how the programme can be developed in new and interesting ways. This project has allowed us to break out of the conventional time constraints that we normally have to conform to for a radio programme and help the audience to discover extra material.

We wanted it to feel just like normal programme, ensuring users could lean back and listen yet also drive them to interact. It was really interesting for us to design the holistic product - content and interface - working from the start point that users may not be actually looking the screen while they’re listening!

Our design solution uses visual blocks to represent the various components of the show - when we normally produce radio we tend to think in this visual way to plan the programme structure. So it was really satisfying to expose this, and we hope it offers additional insight to the audience.

What were the challenges of working on this?

The running time of this special edition is 90 minutes, but if you add up all the individual additional segments here we have just over 2 hours of content. This content took more than twice as long to produce compared to our weekday programme (which is normally 3 hours long), as although there’s less material overall, the show still contains all the regular features, plus of course the extra alternative content. The main overhead was planning and editing the material so that the primary and alternative segments were the same length, allowing us to synchronise the junctions.

What’s Next?

There are lots of different directions this prototype could be taken in. The idea of splitting up the content into chunks or ‘objects’ could open up different ways of building the programme. For example, what would happen if as well as swapping, you could add blocks in, or remove one completely to make the programme a different length? It would also be great to see how the current prototype could work for different shows or genres.