Conscious of the short half-life of consumer technology in today's culture, one digital TV client asked frog design to identify a new strategic direction for the television experience. While a current leader in their field, the company recognized that the digital media landscape was in a state of flux, their market subject to the dramatic influence of new technologies. Our challenge was to understand television use in a global context and utilize this information to re-envision our client’s future.

Specifically, we needed to identify a design direction for this client that would contextualize our ideas in terms of market drivers and end-user needs. Because we were working with an international business, a global perspective was key – our recommendations would inform the client’s future product innovation across continents. With the challenge of a short, six-week timeframe, frog needed to devise new methodologies for collecting this data.

Design Research, frog-Style

At frog, projects move with an aggressive momentum to keep pace with innovation. Time is a productive constraint that fosters creativity and high-impact prioritization of opportunities and features. Our research plans are tailored for rapid deployment, and improvisational methods enable flexibility and efficiency.

We harvest ideas at the edges, and actualize them through design. Our design research methods are adapted from psychology, sociology, and anthropology, and have been modified specifically to inform product innovation.

Innovative Method to Address Client Needs

Our primary research needed to reveal user opinions and behavior over time. With the working assumption that future visual content will be available anytime and anywhere, we sought to understand the workarounds that are used today to address gaps in content availability. Our investigation included all types of video, from broadcast to hypercast, from network TV to YouTube. Furthermore, we wanted to elicit data on how people felt about new media outlets, traditional television, and the social, cultural, and technological issues that impact them directly. Who were viewers talking to about shows? What prompted the conversation? How did they ultimately decide what to watch and where?