Sir David Attenborough's
Story of Life
An iOS and Android app designed to celebrate a lifetime of
outstanding work on Sir David's 90th birthday.
The story of how we created an app to capture the wonder of the natural world
THE BRIEF
"Help us to create an app for Sir David's birthday.
It can be anything, but it should celebrate his work."
A wide brief, a big ask, a lot of stakeholders.

I led the co-creation of 10 ideas and presented them to the client.
I enthused about everything, from a Siri for the natural world voiced by Sir David, to a platform for crowd-sourcing positive action on climate change.

I presented them to provoke a response and hopefully narrow the brief down.
In the feedback, we got what we needed.
THE REAL BRIEF
"Create a video platform for BBC Earth,
that can be monetised outside of the UK."
What I did
"The camera people do all the hard work. I just come along afterwards and do some talking."
Sir David Attenborough
Now I knew the real ask, the work began to look at what the app should do.

It should capture the essence of the man it's celebrating. This is someone who has searched for the wonders of our planet and uncovered them for us all.

Principle 1: Explore the natural world
Principle 2: Create stories of life through the lens
Principle 3: Share your awe and passion for natural world with others

All three are what Sir David does in his documentaries.

The next step was to speak to the man himself. He's incredibly engaging, warm and humble. He downplayed his contribution, saying it's the camera-operators who should be elevated, and not him.
My Three Tracks of Work
Experience Design
Imagine and test the assumptions for the overall experience and break it down into user journeys, so we can understand everything that we'll need to make.
Interaction Design
Create a tactile, accessible interface for tablet and mobile that connects users to the clips and embodies the idea of searching and discovering the natural world.
Logic Design
Work out a taxonomy and suggested clips ruleset to support the main user tasks in the app: Freeform discovery and Collection Building.
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Lead by Example
I wanted users to explore and be amazed by what they could find, but I also wanted them to curate their findings. By leading with examples created by Sir David himself, we modelled the behaviour we wanted to create, as well as affording a low-investment point of entry to binge individual clips.
INTERACTION DESIGN
Inspired by the Lens
We used a circular lens shape for the UI, inspired by editing jog-wheels, camera focus and zoom. We rapidly protoyped and tested them out.

The same circular sweeping motion was used for all the main interactive elements. It is used on the main filter for discovering clips, it forms the basis of the video controls and it is the way you "slide to unlock" bonus content, triggered by creating your own clips.
LOGIC DESIGN
Defeat echo chambers
I wanted a system that could learn what you like, but surprise you. I wanted to encourage sharing, but keep injecting freshness. By looking at videos you've viewed, items we've suggested but were not chosen and clips you've viewed from friends, we curate your next adventure to include things that none of you have seen before, but that fit the theme you've embarked on.
Work Product
Things I made to help our team do their work, and to prove that our approach was sound.
Problem Solved
The tech team was worried about the performance of progressive blurring in real time. I suggested having two images and slowly decreasing the opacity of the blurred one to reveal the sharp image behind. The solve worked flawlessly.
Categorisation
Working with the experts at the BBC we found non-technical names for complex things - that became the way in for organising our clips.
Taxonomy
I mapped out and stress tested the tagging system for clips, and groomed the entire database of 40,000+ datapoints to find any errors. I needed this to be perfect.
Logic Flows
Slick UI is my happy place. Here I detail how we can load things so that the app runs fast as lightning, and you're never waiting for content to appear.
Accessibility
I mapped out a simplified interaction pattern for when device accessibility modes were enabled.
Testing
Creating small testable prototypes to understand usability for our unique new interface. It's risky moving off from familiar patterns. I had to make sure that our bespoke solve was easily understood.
Reception
Highly rated on Play Store and App Store.

BAFTA - Nominee - Digital Craft
LIA - Gold - for Interface and Navigation
New York Festivals - Gold - Interface and Navigation
AVA Digital Awards - Platinum - App for Entertainment
Lovies - Gold - Education and Reference
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