Channel 4 Humans

A cross-platform voice experience for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant to bring the world of Channel 4's Humans to life

The challenge

Become the first UK broadcaster to promote a tv show through Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

The outcome

A unique and innovative Turing test-style voice experience with over 50,000 users in its first week.

Awards and recognition

Lovie award
Herald digital business award
Promax award

An engaging narrative

Using our own ‘Story Mode’ method of voice development, we control how users move through each experience and ensure the assistants serve the right questions and responses in sequence, resulting in a smooth, consistent, and engaging experience.

Built with

To reduce development time and ongoing maintenance, we used a cross-platform approach to develop the Human Test.

We used our experience developing entertainment voice experience for Alexa to create an innovative and unique experience for Channel 4, which led to us becoming Amazon Approved Alexa Skill Builders.

As the first company to launch a Google Home Action in the UK, we were able to use our wealth of knowledge in voice development to create the experience on both Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant simultaneously.

Hosting the experience’s content on Azure, we used Azure Functions as a facade between a shared backend codebase and the Alexa and Google Assistant platforms.

Results

The experience was launched in April 2018, accompanied by cross-channel promotion by Channel 4 on-air and online, as well as a companion website NSDU.co.uk. The experience received over 50,000 users in its first week, and was rated highly on both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant platforms.

50 thousand users in the first week

users in the first week

14 awards wins

award wins

Gold & People's Lovie Awards

Gold & People’s Lovie Awards

Wood Pencil D&AD

Wood Pencil D&AD

Watch humans cast use our voice skill

Thought leaders

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