Mess TV: SMS and MMS community television
A nightly community TV show on TV Norge, running from 2am to noon the next day, carried largely by SMS and MMS messages submitted from mobile phones. In 2003, an MMS was a photograph from a camera phone sent over the air, and most viewers didn’t yet have camera phones, so the incoming pictures were novel. The show worked because Norway is geographically dispersed and television is how people who live far apart stay loosely connected. My job was to redesign the on-screen interface so the audience’s messages and photographs could read cleanly on a television at three in the morning.
A consultancy case study from autumn 2003, a project for Mess TV on TV Norge in Norway. I rebranded the show against the TV Norge visual identity, refined the SMS and MMS interaction scenarios, and advised on linear broadcast and interactive content.
Features
- Standard layout similar to other SMS television shows, but with high attention to detail and clean, compact layout
- Clean background colours foreground the messy user-generated content
- Simple use of fonts and colours to lessen the visual overload of multiple messages
- Clear divisions between different areas of content
- MMS pictures can be submitted and displayed as part of competitions or themes
We conducted specific audience analysis on themes and content that generated the most interest, and adapted the interface to audience demands.
Future developments
- Location-based services, personalisation and competitions
- MMS video diaries, the ability for the audience to submit diaries of community projects or daily life, with some editorial control over editing and presentation, perhaps through an online interface
