Spark (D&AD New Blood 2019 Winner)

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Spark (by BBC Sounds)
UX Design, UI Design

D&AD New Blood Award 2019 Pencil Winner (BBC's Brief)

BRIEF

BBC Sounds bring together the BBC’s live and on-demand radio, music and podcasts into a single personalised experience. It provides one-tap access to the latest episodes of your favourite BBC podcasts and radio shows while introducing you to new audio from the 80,000 hours of content available.

The challenge was to develop BBC Sounds’ current offerings for younger audiences (18–35 year olds).

INSIGHT

Most digital music services personalise recommendations based on music genres. However, research also shows that young people view music genres as just a shortcut to selecting music. They listen to different kinds of music based on where they are and why they're listening.

Solution

Spark is a new BBC Sounds feature that prioritises the context of listening. It integrates BBC Sounds with your calendar and location information to learn from your routine and past listening habits to give personalised recommendations based on your location and motivation of listening.

With machine learning technology, Spark aims to recognise your listening motivation every time you tune in to improve the diverse moments of your life.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE CASE-STUDY WRITE UP ON MEDIUM

GETTING STARTED / ONBOARDING
Simply connect your favourite calendar app and allow access to your location information. Spark pulls data from your schedule with and feeds it to the BBC Sounds app, basing recommendations on your routine.

'no activity' fallback

As calendars tend to be not completely filled, if there are any gaps in your schedule, in-app smart prompts will ask for your activity based on your location to learn more about your current listening motivation.