Method creates digital solutions for Channel Five TV on demand services

Method has carried out a design overhaul for all of Channel Five’s digital platforms, including the channel’s user-interface design for You View – the free-to-air Internet-connected TV service which launches next year.

A suite of interface designs and a visual language has also been created for implementation on Demand Five, the broadcaster’s online playback service, and as iPad and iPhone apps, to launch by Christmas.

The consultancy was appointed in April, having pitched for the Demand Five project, and the brief was subsequently widened to look at other platforms during development.

Previously, the broadcaster kept its programming information and its on-demand service on separate websites. This is also the current practice of other UK terrestrial channels.

Method’s Demand Five solution has now gone live and combines the function of both websites to offer ’more integrated video content’, says Method creative director Philip O’Dwyer. The new integrated site is housed at www.five.tv.

’Video will become the heart of the website and the most compelling content and programming information will be brought together, resulting in a shorter user journey and increased video viewing,’ says O’Dwyer.

The new look across platforms will be ’more televisual with a darker colour palette, where video can come to the forefront’, he adds.

Demand Five and You View will have key differences, according to O’Dwyer, who says, ’There is a visual consistency, but the interaction patterns are totally different.’

When You View launches in June 2011 it will require Internet interaction, but with a TV remote rather than a mouse. As such, it has been important to ’reduce the choice a user has’, says O’Dwyer, who explains that the interface can only facilitate up, down, left and right movement.

You View was originally known as Project Canvas and was branded in its current iteration by ad agency RKCR/Y&R (www.designweek.co.uk, 17 September).