Everyone knows Swedes love the Eurovision Song Contest. So much so, they hold a 6-week long contest called Melodifestivalen to determine their entry to the festival. With as many as 4 million viewers - just under half the population of Sweden - it’s the nation’s most watched programme, generating passionate responses from fans and observers alike.

But in recent years, views have dropped and sentiment has floundered; with many viewers expressing a concern that the show wasn’t even filmed live.

So to help viewers feel a real-time connection with the show, the brief was to develop a digital solution which would connect the audience at home and make them feel like an integral part of the programme.

Our second screen app was designed to maintain user interaction before, during and after each Melodifestivalen show. Considered interaction design connected the audience at home with the emotions in the arena instantaneously.

Voting with the app was modeled on the idea that a good performance should be decided on impulse. Users were encouraged to ‘vote with your heart’, disrupting the typical voting behaviour based on a 5 min recap. Instead, users could cast votes per artist, whenever they felt inspired to do so.

Making predictions with the app maintained interest in the downtime between shows. By ranking the artists in order, you could compare your guesses with the actual results, giving the audience an easy way to compare their viewpoint.

Both voting and prediction functions connected you with friends. This knowledge encouraged users to offset friends votes, or even support an artist they may have been unsure about before.