BBC R&D: curation tools and content discovery
Prototyping how editors could see, question and use what an analysis of web content had found
Client: BBC Research & Development
Project: Editorial Algorithms
Our part: Two years contracting within the R&D team: workshops, and rapid prototypes of curation tools and data visualisation
In a sentence
BBC R&D researched whether technology could help editors find the right content for the right audience; we prototyped the curation tools that put what it found in front of the people who'd use it.
The project
With so much content, how do you find the right thing for the right audience? BBC editors make that call every day, weighing the audience, the timing, the quality of the piece and the BBC's own guidelines. The research asked whether technology could help: reading web content for editorial qualities such as tone, sentiment, readability and topic, so a curator could ask for "something lighter in tone than this" or "the latest pieces on this subject, long and in depth".
What we did
Our part was the human side of that. Contracting within the R&D team, we took part in its workshops and rapidly prototyped curation tools: ways of surfacing what the analysis had found so that editors could see it, question it and use it, through interactive prototypes and data visualisation built in JavaScript (React, Node, ES6). The analysis itself was BBC R&D's, and they describe the wider project on their Editorial Algorithms project page.
Where it went next
Then it was research and prototypes. Now it's practical, and it no longer needs a data centre: models that run on a phone or a computer in the building can read tone, language and topic for themselves. We bring the same thinking to what to watch at home, across the TV, the streaming services and a family's own films, in our home control system, and to the media analysis described on our AI page. Our work on Sky Live came at the same audience from the other side: the living room, and making an experience work for everyone in it.
Something similar in mind?
If you look after a large collection, an archive, a catalogue or a schedule, and want curation tools that help people find the right thing in it, get in touch.
