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.

✩ Team

iPlayer -> linear TV capabilities

✩ My role

Leading experience definition and cross-team alignment across Product and Engineering.

✩ Overview

Millions of viewers enter BBC digital ecosystem each week via on-screen prompts shown during live TV. These prompts are called “connected triggers” (which invite viewers to press a remote button to access related digital content).

This uncover 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.

✩ The Challenge

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.

✩ What I did

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)

✩ Final Solution

✩ Outcome

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.