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CBBC Dixi

BAFTA award winning online experience for CBBC

An educational interactive platform to support Internet Safety Day.

Scope

Campaign
Content
Design
Social Media
Wed Development

Sector

TV & Film Production

Links

The Website

We worked alongside Kindle Entertainment and BBC to build an online platform to house their first web-only CBBC drama.

The BAFTA award winning series, Dixi highlights Internet Safety Day and helps to make children aware of the importance of their own safety on social media.

We were asked to build a website in a social media style to house the daily vlog episodes and provide realtime content updates throughout the day to engage children with the drama and encourage them to participate in the 'whodunnit' mystery.

Realtime Updates

We designed the Dixi website to feature character profiles and a daily newsfeed which closely mimic a real social network. Daily XML updates are used to add unscripted content throughout the course of the 15 days, this content is used to respond to user comments.

Children’s comments have been a great indicator of user engagement with the series and we have found that children have been showing a definite awareness of internet safety issues. The addition of realtime comments to the feed, in response to user observations, gives the impression of an active and dynamic social network where children can get feedback on their ideas about the story. This is an approach that hasn’t previously been used on the CBBC games platform.

Technology

The site was built to function entirely within the CBBC games platform. This platform has traditionally used Flash to deliver games but due to its lack of reach, HTML5 is steadily replacing it. This transition will increase the accessibility of CBBC games on mobile and tablet. In order to produce a realistic social media experience for CBBC users, we utilised the following technologies, which hadn’t previously been used on the BBC platform; HTML5 video, XML timestamping and scrolling within the games platform.

We were asked to create a brand identity for the show. The brand needed to be child and young-teen friendly without looking childish and over busy. Colour choice and font were very important.

After some brainstorming and refining of ideas we decided on a small, but bold colour palette using simple, clean lines alongside clear icons to give the site a 'social network' feel and help to simplify the user journey.

For the 3rd year in a row, we teamed up with Kindle Entertainment and the BBC to create Dixi:3.

“CBBC has announced Dixi, its groundbreaking interactive drama about staying safe online is to return for a third series. Dixi:3 - Game of Dixi launches on 9 February 2016 to coincide with Safer Internet Day. New vlogs and episodes will be uploaded to the CBBC website every day until 5 March 2016 and series 1 is scheduled to hit TV screens in the new year.

In keeping with Dixi’s central message of staying safe online, series three explores the havoc wreaked by internet trolls, not only looking at practical issues of online safety, but delving into the emotional fall-out that comes from cyber-hate."