Thomson Grass Valley

In the wake of strategic restructuring, TGV faced an extreme business challenge; deliver a consistent brand experience from 14 newly combined R&D units spread all over the world; and, improve the experience of customers in new, emerging segments. Our hardware, software and strategic design for TGV has been so successful they have made us a mandatory part of the innovation process. 2008 saw TheAlloy and TGV win a bronze DBA Design Effectiveness Award, recognising their joint achievement in exemplary design management.

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Indigo Pro-AV switcher

'Switchers' are at the centre of all live-to-air TV production. New technology is putting this ability within the reach of a new type of customer in smaller organisations, with different buying habits. We collaborated with the R&D team in Germany to create hardware and software, with revised design identities more relevant to these emerging markets. The new design didn’t just increase sales, but significantly lowered production costs.

Infinity Digital Media Recorder

News crews in the field often need to make rapid edits to raw camera footage to get to air faster. They often have to work on the move over rough terrain in extreme conditions, sometimes even under fire. To understand this challenging environment in detail, we carried out extensive user research. This insight combined with our understanding of internal component requirements created an innovative form factor, delivering an optimised user experience in the toughest of situations.

Dyno

Live action replay editors at sporting events face an extreme usability challenge: They must capture and log a constant stream of live action clips for either immediate or long term use. We worked with R&D teams in Beaverton and Tokyo to optimise the overall system configuration. We then helped to gather and act on user input to create a seamless customer experience; encompassing a touch screen UI, large screen PC application, and the design of an ultra-compact user console. Launched at NAB 2008.

EDIUS: Pro-AV digital editing suite

The EDIUS digital off-line editing suite created by the R&D team in Japan contained world beating technology, hidden behind a user interface designed for the local market. Inspired by 1 to 1 user interviews we created a totally new look for this large-screen PC application, with enhanced usability and global market appeal, whilst retaining the majority of the core code. Our design approach allowed the new look to be launched, in record time at NAB2007 where it also won an award for 'Best Innovation'.

Software guidelines

Our challenge was to create a visually compelling and highly usable software identity, that could be implemented on dozens of in-development software applications. Our strategy combines a complete set of iconography and graphical devices for overall screen layouts, combined with common behaviour guidance. The web-based guidelines include re-usable WPF assets which can be directly implemented within the production code. They are kept up to date as part of our ongoing corporate identity support.