Background
The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) is a modern, multiplatform media organisation with a free-to-air TV portfolio spanning five distinctive channels in SBS, NITV, SBS VICELAND, SBS Food and SBS World Movies; an extensive radio network providing communities with services in more than 60 languages; and an innovative digital offering, including SBS On Demand, available to audiences anytime and anywhere.
As Australia’s most diverse broadcaster, SBS holds a unique place in the Australian media landscape, inspiring all Australians to explore, respect and celebrate our diverse world and in doing so, contributes to an inclusive and cohesive society.
Challenge
A percentage of the SBS audience have English as a second language and as part of its charter, SBS is committed to supporting a multicultural audience in providing global content from around the world. As a result, SBS wanted to evaluate how it might engage an audience via an interface they could more comfortably use in their own written language.
SBS also wanted to determine whether adding linear channels to the OTT platform would be beneficial for its service across connected TV platforms. It would be important to ensure that a linear offering would be best suited for the various platforms and that a diverse audience would be able to engage with it.
Solution
Market research played heavily in meeting the objectives of the project. Accedo implemented strong UX activities by undertaking user research to understand how users are interacting with SBS’ current offerings in comparison to how they also interacted with similar features from other providers. Accedo’s research included focus group discussion, card sorting, wireframe reviews and feature voting followed by one-to-one user interviews and follow-ups. The UX research findings were then compiled to create insight and recommendations on the next steps.
Accedo integrated Chinese and Arabic language versions, with right-to-left presentation. Thorough testing ensured that these language versions would deliver the same great user experience as the English version.
As a long-time trusted partner of SBS, Accedo had previously helped to deliver an engaging video experience to customers. With an increasing video consumption on Connected TV, Accedo continues to build on new features to the existing service quickly whilst also providing a robust and stable experience for its customers by using QA automation tools.
Results
Thanks to Accedo’s collaborative team integrating with SBS’ customers, product owners, UX team and technical team, the results for the project were achieved within two months. As a result of the research conducted, numerous UX recommendations have been implemented across web, mobile and Connected TV.
Going forward, SBS now has a solution which is scalable to incorporate new languages and can be deployed to other connected devices dynamically by SBS Editors.
