TECHTV, INC
PROJECT DATES: April 2003 - April 2004
TechTV was a cable television network that showcased the smart, edgy, and unexpected side of technology. With reach to over 40 million households in the United States and abroad, TechTV gained a significant share of TV viewership during its eight years on the market. The TechTV.com web site, which received an average of almost two million visitors per day, was by far the most widely visited of the major (U.S.) cable networks that offered show related content on the Internet.
TechTV: Home
As technical designer with the Creative Services department, I was in charge of solving conceptual and practical design problems for several divisions within the company. The following examples illustrate three projects involving collaboration between various departments:
Techtv.com Web Site
The company's forward facing web site provided visitors with an enormous amount of show related content — from computer "help and how to" advice, to consumer product guides, to technology related news and information. My day to day activities involved designing and managing many of the (Vignette StoryServer) templates that served content for shows such as Robot Wars, Anime Unleashed, The Screen Savers, and Call for Help. Close communication with the editorial department ensured that show related content was produced quickly and efficiently.
TV Shows Redesign
The Creative Services department was charged with designing new, modular, and brand specific templates for TechTV's show related content. The redesign effort began with X-Play, TechTV's signature television show for the computer gaming lifestyle. The gaming industry's technology-savy consumer base was ideal for building a media rich online experience — complete with Flash animated messaging, advanced CSS techniques (e.g. alpha transparencies and hidden layers that can be turned on and off), and DHTML scrolling widgets.
TechTV: X-Play Redesign
Collaboration between TechTV's business, marketing, and TV production groups enable us to create a user interface that balanced advertising, branding, and show content.
I was responsible for designing and prototyping the functional user interface. As the in-house CSS and web standards expert, I also spearheaded the use of standards compliant XHTML/CSS for the development of the new show pages.
The standards compliant approach involves separating semantic XHTML markup from the CSS presentation layer; thereby improving site optimization, increasing accessibility, and solving cross-browser compatibility issues (read my PDF white paper to learn more about XHTML/CSS and web standards).
TechTV: Intranet
The new site provided an exciting, sophisticated, and usable broadband experience while still keeping efficiency and manageability a central concept behind the development of the new templates.
Intranet Development
The Engineering and the Creative Services departments collaborated in the migration of TechTV's content management system (CMS) from Vignette StoryServer to JSP (running Caucho Resin®). In order to create a solid foundation for the company's transition to a Java/JSP back-end, we began with the development of several key intranet applications (notably a television Media Library and an employee Associate Directory). I was responsible for designing and building the user interfaces (both public views and edit views). The new Associate Directory (right) used semantic mark-up (XHTML/CSS) and JSP to deliver a robust user interface for the company's 300+ employees.
The resulting applications were intuitive and easy to use- providing TechTV associates with useful tools for day to day television production activities.