PIE

Platform for Interactive Experiences

At Nickelodeon, our team created an innovative, pioneering process and a suite of technology that advances a state of the art experience for interactive video. We developed our own authoring tool, customer experience, and creative process that enable us to produce interactive video at scale.

The goal was to deliver a new interactive content type for kids at a scale unparalleled in the industry. We saw a huge opportunity introducing interactive video through our app.  First, it is a huge competitive differentiator.  It leverages the interactive capabilities of the device that users have come to expect.  Next, it gives new life to a body of our linear content that already suggests interactivity.  Finally, it strengthens the “good for your child” claim we implicitly and
explicitly make. Through the different rounds of usability, we identified key moments that were delightful, purposeful, and supported the overall curriculum of the interactive content. We used this knowledge to inform the direction and strategy for interactions throughout the user journey that supported the curricular goals of the content and still had kids feeling like a part of the mission.

Nickelodeon’s new play-along video authoring tool puts the ability to create interactive digital content into the hands of Nick’s show creators, producers and animators. The tool supports real-time scene editing and a live preview that allows the teams to layer in interactive elements, to create brand-new play-along moments within any episode. Interactive writers and producers can also be integrated into a show’s creative team, allowing them to generate engaging, story-driven interactive videos from the start of a production and deliver both linear and play-along versions of the same episode simultaneously. Additionally, the play-along video player can be integrated into the existing Nickelodeon video apps, eliminating the need to download a separate app.

Teams: Nickelodeon Engineering, Play-along Creative, and Product teams

Launched: Internal Authoring Tool – 2016, Play-along Videos – 2017