Turner Broadcasting – Stephanie Boyle

Brands & Services

Cartoon Network

adult Swim

Client

Turner Broadcasting System International, London 2008-2009

Role

Product Design & Innovation Lead. Product Design & Strategy

OVERVIEW

[adult swim] features animated shows and original programming targeted to an over 18 audience who enjoys animated content. Launching for the first time in the UK in 2008, [adult swim] wanted to launch a companion mobile experience to extend their content behind the television.

IMPORTANT CONTEXT

Product Goals

Maintain individual brand identity
Animation titles vary by style and tone across an entire network. We created a uniform display across the entire catalogue that maintains the brand identity of each respective show.

Keep the content fresh
The mobile entertainment consumer is generally engaging while in time waster mode. Our research showed they are killing time waiting for the bus, at the dentist, in queue or otherwise unoccupied. Due to the nature of a mobile entertainment consumer and the amount of time the target audience purportedly has to waste, we created a structure for an infinite amount of content and editorial interfaces to easily add new content as it became available.

Provide Flexibility
The primary business was monetization of assets from the network in the form of ringtones and wallpapers with the option to offer a premium ad-supported service without further investment.

Editorial interface for Gags
A cornerstone of Adult Swim editorial is to provide a producer and editorial interface to create tricks, games, and gags (or as the kids call it today: trolling) without being confused for a bug or network failure.

Result

We built a product platform that solved all of the product goals while anticipating a few things to come. By creating an infinite canvas and multi-direction navigation, we were able to create a lightweight graphical user interface meeting all of the product & business goals.

OVERVIEW

Cartoon Network launched in the UK as a part of Turner Broadcasting International Brands. It was the first of its kind direct-to-consumer service. With ringtones, wallpapers, games, & some downloadable videos, it brought cartoon content to users worldwide.* This was a unique service for kids that was distributed through parent’s devices.

Important Context

The global ringtone market peaked at $6.6billion in 2006. As hard as it might be to imagine this today, streaming services were nascent businesses in 2007. Spotify, that would later go on to disrupt music via streaming, was only available in one market by 2007. According to the NYTimes, 2006 European ringtone sales were $1.1 billion and still growing at the time. Turner saw this as a money-making opportunity and they were right.

product goals

Easy for kids, safe for parents The service must be easy enough to use on the widest number of devices but with controls to make the service as safe for parents to hand-back to kids. Hand-back is a term used to demonstrate that parents would hand children phones to entertain them whilst driving, as an example. Today, we just buy them their own tablets.

product strategy

– Simplicity: We designed access keys so that on any device, even a flip phone, kids could always press the number 3 to get to ringtones irrespective of the time of phone in their hands.
– Control: A parental concern we uncovered in our research was that children could leave the Cartoon Network experience and be on the wide open mobile Internet or making many purchases. We built in controls that required users to do math questions in order to navigate away from Cartoon Network, helping contain users in an experience made for kids.

Result

The functional product design made for quick roll out or new content as it was approved for mobile sale. In talking to parents, we found that their kids really enjoyed just playing the ringtone previews over and over and over again.
Preview this Powerpuff Girls Theme. It’s pretty catchy!