A pioneer in the delivery of multi-channel television in the UK, BSkyB has recognised the potential to use design as a market differentiator. While continuing to evolve its product offering, BSkyB has focused on developing in-house design management capability while building a strong relationship with an external design consultancy for the execution of product designs.
As a pioneer in the delivery of multi-channel television in the UK, BSkyB has continued to evolve its product offering, being an early adopter of interactive television services, downloadable TV content via broadband and hard-disc based video recording systems to allow subscribers to pause live TV and record large quantities of content for later viewing.
The Product Design team at Sky, headed by Brian Lenz, is responsible for defining and designing the future products and services roadmap of Sky’s customer proposition. The Product Design team works at the beginning of the product lifecycle to identify new product ideas, facilitating the company wide innovation processes, and to further define and analyse which concepts progress onto the firm’s development roadmap. Once projects are in the development phase, the Product Design team is responsible for the look, feel and user experience design of the new propositions, across both hardware and software.
Ed Snodgrass, is the Hardware Design Manager in the team, chartered with creating and enforcing a hardware design vision for all of the digital devices that Sky develops to deliver its services to customers. The bulk of all industrial design activities are outsourced to external consultancies, managed closely by Ed. He is also the liaison with Sky’s manufacturing partners on all industrial and product design related matters.
Key elements of BSkyB’s product design strategy include:
- Developing a formal design language to give all products a consistent brand identity
- Creating separate identities for individual product lines based on the requirements of their specific markets.
- Developing a policy for visually identical products with multiple simultaneous manufacturing partners, using different internal electronics
- Ensuring the commissioned agency had a crucial understanding of the brand and positioning, and briefing them to incorporate brand identity into product design
- Working with its external agency partner during early market position, user behaviour and concept development phases
- Getting buy-in from senior management for investment in design
- Maintaining visibility and higher status of design within the organisation.
History
BSkyB was formed by the merger of two early incumbents in the UK multi-channel TV market. Sky, launched in 1989, originally offered four TV channels to subscribers using the Astra communications satellite. Rival British Satellite Broadcasting launched a year later and quickly merged with Sky to form the basis of today’s organisation. BSkyB grew rapidly over the rest of the decade. By 1995 it had more than five million subscribers and offered them 23 channels. In 1999, free Sky set top boxes and mini-dishes helped Sky digital become the fastest growing digital platform in Europe, acquiring over 1.2 million subscribers in just 10 months.
A pioneer in the delivery of multi-channel pay television in the UK, BSkyB has recognised the potential to use design as a market differentiator. While continuing to evolve its product offering, BSkyB has focused on developing in-house design management capability while building a strong relationship with an external design consultancy for the execution of industrial design.
