{"id":491,"date":"2021-08-05T14:09:22","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T14:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ambeault.net\/?page_id=491"},"modified":"2021-10-04T22:02:04","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T22:02:04","slug":"491-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ambeault.net\/?page_id=491","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Location-based Content Discovery<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

|<\/span><\/strong> Objective<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Reduce the bounce rate of Discovery Channel’s web and mobile app visitors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

|<\/span><\/strong> Team Leads<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Product: Deanna Tsze<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Design: Soojung Holle<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Engineering: David Wang<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

|<\/span><\/strong> Insights<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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20-50 year old male audience that co-views with their family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discovery Channel\u2019s programming strategy has evolved over the last 8 years to primarily focus on automotive, lifestyle, and competition shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The visitors to the site and apps are a younger demographic than the pay television audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The automotive, lifestyle, and competition shows promoted in the apps and website did not match expectations for the Discovery brand, which meant nature, science, and tech topics to visitors that failed to convert to viewers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Nature, science, and technology shows received little to no marketing promotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When they found nature, science, or technology episodes few were enticing enough to watch because the show and\/or its cast were not familiar to the visitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Location is a central element of the storyline for Discovery Channel\u2019s nature, science, and technology shows. Many included the location of the production in the show name (e.g. Serengeti, Pacific Warriors).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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|<\/span><\/strong> Hypothesis<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Presenting videos by their location will increase relevancy, overcoming the low awareness of specific videos to better convert visitors to viewers before they bounce.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

|<\/span><\/strong> User Experience<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Shark Explorer<\/strong> experience was developed by examining best practices from websites and apps that employed location to create prototypes. These were validated and evolved with weekly remote usability testing starting from the first prototype through production-ready software. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The key features of Shark Explorer were the near real-time shark tracking paired with Shark Week content presented as waypoints on an interactive world map. When tracking the sharks, visitors could find detailed information on the shark including species name, weight, length, gender, who tagged it and, its locations in the ocean. As visitors tracked a shark on its journey through the ocean they could quickly discover short, mid, and long form videos featuring it. In addition to waypoints for each tagged shark, there were also waypoints for the locations of other Shark Week videos.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"Shark
Award-winning desktop and mobile experience<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Low resolution comps for UX research<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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|<\/span><\/strong> Engineering<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

To keep the development effort as small as possible the team selected the \u201cWizard of Oz\u201d testing methodology, where members of the product team orchestrated the consumer experience manually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Shark API fetched shark location data from Argos (humane tagging partner), then combined it with data from a spreadsheet created by the product owner that described how the content should be presented in the user interface. The team traded off tooling with safeguards to reduce the development effort (e.g. confirm valid video URLs before publishing). Human error was mitigated with a manual peer review process before and after publishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The front ends integrated Google Maps with data from the Shark API. The team traded off creating more responsive native iOS and Android experiences, opting for a webview in the mobile apps that used the same responsive implementation from the website.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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|<\/span><\/strong> Technologies<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Location services<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Golang \/ MongoDB \/ REST<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

MS Excel<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

HTML \/ CSS \/ JavaScript<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google Maps<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n