The BBC’s research and development team is to collaborate with six universities countrywide to explore the potential of new forms of broadcast content and interaction in a multiplatform world.

The BBC User Experience Research Partnership will be a four-year collaboration between BBC R&D and the University of Bath, the University of Dundee, University College London, Newcastle University, the University of Nottingham and Swansea University.

The research partnership will also consider new ways of producing media that will help make content more accessible to audiences.

The technical scope of the partnership covers:

  • The User Experience of an IP Broadcasting System: Developing user-centred services across multiple platforms to help advance public service broadcasting in the digital age.
  • Designing for New Interaction: Moving beyond gesture and voice to develop new ways of controlling and displaying digital content for more natural and engaging interfaces.
  • Sustainable Approaches to User Capability: Allowing the industry to meet the changing needs of older users, young children and people with disabilities in accessing digital media.
  • New Production Interface Technologies: Using novel interface and interaction technologies in new ways to give production teams the most creative and effective ways to craft new forms of content

BBC R&D controller Matthew Postgate said: “This is an exciting partnership that allows us to explore how audiences could engage with new types of content in the future, and how we can better make it available to them.

“By bringing together a world class team of experts from academia and BBC R&D, we aim to stimulate innovation that not only benefits the BBC and our audiences, but also the wider industry.”

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