Earlier this month BLITZ was invited to attend the Los Angeles PhizzPop Design Challenge hosted by Microsoft. The 5-day event started off with 2 days of fast paced Silverlight and Expression Blend tutorials. After the 2 days of intense training we were presented with a unique design challenge. Our task was to come up with a creative solution that leveraged Silverlight to solve the problem. For the Los Angeles event our challenge was as follows:
You and your team have just been hired by a consortium representing all of the major Movie and Television studios. Your team constitutes the Office of the President of Products. You are responsible for determining the product strategy for this consortium. While your authority is considerable, it is not absolute.
You must pitch your product solution to the Board of Directors, also known as the Judges.
The media industry is facing an unprecedented set of challenges today. Digital distribution, a dramatic reduction in traditional advertising, the rise of social networks such as MySpace and Facebook and other factors have all combined to force a fundamental rethinking of the entertainment industry.
Your job is to:
- Find new ways to monetize the deep catalog of content that the consortium has. You should specifically be thinking beyond simply pay per download, subscriptions or advertising
- Look for new ways to create fans of our content. Sites like MySpace and Facebook (among others) have shown us that social networks are powerful tools. Figure out how to exploit the principles of social networking, integrate into existing networks, or both
- Look for ways to exploit the Long Tail. The consortium has a fantastic amount of old content that’s very valuable to many people. Figure out how to best help our users find existing content, discover other content, and share this with friends
- Figure out the device & platform landscape. Between iTunes, the iPod, Zune, Media Center, UnBox, Xbox Live, Joost, and everything else, it’s difficult to understand the overall experience system for our users. Explore creating your own, partnering, or both
A large part of this design challenge is to make whatever experience desirable, rather than simply a forced option. Specific features and functionality should be determined by the needs of the personas (see following pages). While your solution does not need to be functional, it must simulate the experience of each of the personas you’ve chosen to solve for.
We were then given 3-days to develop a 7 minute presentation for a panel of judges. The following is a screencast of our final presentation.
We used some Powerpoint slides to deliver our pitch along with a live demo that incorporated Silverlight, some CSS trickery, some ASP.NET code, and 4 different Windows Live services:
- Windows Live ID for user authentication
- Windows Live Contacts for friends list and application sharing
- Windows Live Spaces for viral video sharing within a social network
- Microsoft Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live for HD quality video streaming
You can view our final working Action application here. Keep in mind that while this is a fully functional demo, this is by no means production code, and there are a few clever hacks put in place in order to meet the tight deadline! 
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Well done team blitz!
I love the approach and +1 vote from me
. An approach in temrs of advertising could be that as certain movies (todays iterations) begin to play, the timline is contextually aware and it searches the interweb around products that suite the respective tags.
eg: Transformers. Sure you could approach GM for ad revenue, or it could feed into a marketers channel whom will provide accessories for GM cars & so on.. all whilst watching key moments in time of Transformers. (ie the part where bumblebee switches from old car to new, could be a used car sales ad heh)
Anyway, this invokes a lot of positive inspiration and i love it.
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Scott Barnes
RIA Evangelist
Microsoft.
Good idea. Lets make this together – best wishes from Poland.
Nice work, but as you well know, it could just as easily have been achieved in Flash. With the Flex framework being inreasingly used, along with the cross platform market penetration of Flash, I really don’t understand what makes Microsoft think there is room for them to move into this market. Sure they can role out Silverlight on machines running Windows, but getting to the rest will be very hard when Flash enjoys such deep market penetration, does everything Silverlight does plus some, and whose user base and support network is absolutely massive.
Graeme, of course you COULD use Flash. But that wasn’t the point of the exercise. Silverlight is just another tool for the developers toolbox, and the more tools you have the more options you have when implementing a solution. Of course you should always use the right tool for the job based on client/job requirements. I’m sure you could use a flame thrower and a chisel to mount a picture on a wall, but it would be far easier to use a hammer and nail.
Hey! Can I ask what’s this template you are using in your blog? thanks.