Working with the leading Irish broadcaster RTE, the aim was to design and engineer a iPhone and iPad as an innovative step forward in their digital offering and as a first international proposition for the business, allowing Irish video content to be delivered to users across the globe.
The applications enable users to browse RTE video content by recommended, most popular, catch up, categories and A-Z. From the programme page, users can access available episodes and stream instantly. Curated collections and box sets are also available. The apps are subscription-based meaning the majority of the content is behind a paywall although it is free to browse and download the apps.
There is also a free section within the app to entice users and give them some content to watch without signing up to a monthly subscription. The design of the apps focuses on the mental modes of the user and whether they want to discover new content, browse via catch up or search by category or A-Z. These well-defined areas have ensured the user experience is efficient and easy. The apps were developed using a native framework and integrated with Ooyala and their video player and nice build a customer middle layer to better control the subscriptions and content provision across regions and to ensure the proposition was scalable for future platforms.
The RTE Player International apps have recently launched successfully. Both apps have received positive reviews and we plan to proceed with future feature developments inline with the product and platform roadmap.