Interactive ‘chooser’ for ITV’s Top 50
Release date: May 20, 2005
Pushbutton Ltd, the interactive TV development company responsible for ‘red button’ applications in hit ITV shows ‘Celebrity Love Island’ and ‘The X Factor’, has designed and built a voting application to help ITV find the viewers top 50 Shows.
Using a unique, scrolling cross-hair device, viewers vote by moving across a grid using the arrow keys on their remote controller. As they select a show from the list of 50, a thumbnail picture from the show zooms forward. Pressing select places an ‘x’ on the grid and finalises the viewer’s choice. Viewers can select up to five shows from ITV’s archive.
The quest for the viewers all time Top 50 ITV Shows is part of ITV’s 50th birthday celebrations. When all the viewer votes have been collected, a show will be broadcast on September the 10th revealing the order in which ITV viewers have listed their fifty favourite ITV programmes of all time.
The ‘red button’ application also includes links to gaming opportunities provided by Littlewoods ‘Game On’.
Pushbutton’s Managing Director, Paula Byrne, said “We had to come up with a quick and easy way for viewers to browse the fifty options. The cross hair approach works brilliantly, and Pushbutton’s unrivalled expertise in optimising the performance of set top boxes has paid off in the speed and ease with which viewers can make their choices. It is a unique approach to tackling the multi-option selection process on iTV and is sure to be replicated.”
ITV’s Lead Interactive Producer, Peter Mossman said “This project really presented some challenges, both technically and from the point of view of the user experience. To present the 50 options in such a clear and understandable way really demonstrated Pushbutton’s understanding of what we were trying to achieve.”