TED World Theater
COMPANY OVERVIEW
TED is known for being a global community of people seeking a deeper understanding of the world. The organization seeks to change, attitudes, lives and the world through the power of ideas.
TED needed a video platform as well as the concept and design for custom software that would enable them to bring live audience members in a live TED Talk and project these virtual attendees onto the walls of the theater. The team at TED partnered with TokBox and an engineering agency, Neobric, to design and develop a ground breaking experience
MY ROLE
As head of Design at TokBox I was responsible for managing the UX, visual and UI design of the TED World Theater. This included an email campaign and two user flows - one for the participant and one for the moderator. Participants would register for an event via their email and then enter a user flow where they needed to enter their personal information, take a headshot, test their video, audio, and chat, and then wait backstage to watch the event and potentially have an opportunity to as a question live. Moderators were in complete control of accepting, vetting, and selecting a location for every participant. This user needed to be able to chat with an individual, prepare them for going live, review their questions, and bump people out as needed.
There were some unique challenges with this custom software such as having a computer that could run so many videos at once with minimal latency. We also needed to account for one moderator and multiple moderators so the software could be split into separate tasks. This complete experience where viewers could join TED Talk events from home and a moderator had full control of the entire interactive experience all had to reflect the companies branding and existing styles. It was a unique and fascinating challenge to be a part of.