Homes vision
for UKTV
Developing a content platform to help create a new community around real people and real homes
Home and style
UKTV Style was a digital channel that had a wide remit, from lifestyle and fashion to homes and gardens.
When it came to redeveloping their website, UKTV saw an opportunity to create a community around real people and their homes without the expense of launching a new TV channel.
Made by Many were asked to develop the strategy and thinking behind a web platform that would allow UKTV to combine user generated content with their own, creating a highly engaging and socially rich site.
Building online audiences
UKTV has a long and varied history, starting as a single, satellite-only channel in 1992. Since then the channel has grown and diversified.
With a wide range of channels and an even wider range of audiences, how can you build a platform that meets the needs of everyone? Do you build a common suite of functionality and templates, a tool box of applications that can be picked and chosen as the need fits? How does social media fit into this mix and do the same opportunities for community engagement exist across all sites?
We believe in building a common suite of tools that can be re-used across different audiences and segments. However, within this there exists the opportunity to build specialised applications for specific needs (such as project galleries and to-do lists for Homes). Once proved to be engaging to the audience, the same functionality can be extended to other platforms.
Project gallery
Rather than writing documents that no one reads, we believe in using design to explain, demonstrate and unpack our ideas.
In the case of UKTV, we used a series of sketches, wireframes and design studies to help articulate our strategy in a rich and highly communicable manner. These studies were then used to help sell the strategy to the rest of the organisation and get the necessary business buy-in to proceed.