Designing Contextual Journeys from Linear TV to iPlayer
Help migrate the BBC audience to a more personal, targeted and relevant experience, and change the perception of iPlayer from a catch up service to a destination for consumption of new and exclusive content.
Millions of viewers enter the BBC digital ecosystem each week via on-screen prompts shown during live TV. These prompts are called “connected triggers” — they invite viewers to press a remote button to access related digital content.
This uncovers the opportunity for automated triggers that enable easy user-initiated journeys from Broadcast to iPlayer, and for BBC a direct hook into our current Broadcast user base and a more contextual way to connect with the audience.
- Manual, non-scalable operations: promotional content for these journeys relied on central teams, slowing down production and limiting relevance.
- Generic user journeys: viewers were often taken to broad, non-contextual destinations rather than experiences aligned with what they were currently watching.
Working with editorial and engineering, I helped shape a model where:
- Triggers could dynamically surface content related to the current programme or genre
- Destinations (“Connected Bridge” pages) could be automatically populated based on metadata
- Onward journeys supported both immediate viewing and future intent (via Watchlist)
This work helped reposition connected triggers from a promotional feature into a strategic cross-platform engagement mechanism, with stronger alignment between broadcast moments and digital discovery journeys.
Most importantly, it strengthened how viewers transition from passive broadcast viewing into deeper, self-directed digital engagement.
