Creative Technologist

US Election 2012 running on Node.js and HTML5 with realtime GFX. 

Bespoke in-house developed iPad app to control real-time interactive 3D graphics in the newswall used by Sky News’ Martin Stanford and Katie Stallard during US Election and ‘50 States: 50 Voices’ show. 

The main challenge was to developed an easy to use, responsive, flexible and completely non-linear control system for the presenters that would be capable of aggregating multiple realtime data feeds from a different sources accompanied by live push notifications of the latest events. 

Rich data layer was build of real-time results data with an instant analysis layer so that presenters could make and calculate their own predictions of the election outcome. Exit polling data with ability to filter and select different layers of data relevant at the time. Economy, demographics and voting history across different states with social layer and the ability to filter comments to reveal how different groups are reacting to the unfolding news.

News environment is changing with every minute and for the greatest flexibility the entire app was developed in HTML5 with Node.js backend environment. This gave us the grates flexibility and the fastest development time and crucially easy integration with already existing infrastructure and systems.  

Ability to quickly deploy new versions of the app during the development process, across different devices meant the we could rapidly test and response all the changes requested by presenters and greatly improve usability and app adoption while Node.js environment allowed us to create an entire ecosystem based on the realtime data and communication across different devices and systems.