Tell us briefly, what does Candyspace do?
Candyspace are a digital product business who design, build and optimise websites, mobile applications and portals on behalf of our clients. We are a collection of engineers, UX/UI designers and product and delivery experts, with a particular specialism in the end user experience of streaming and VOD products. We have partnered with ITV for over 15 years and currently take responsibility for the front-end of ITVX on iOS, Android and Apple TV, as well as working with Global Media & Entertainment on their Global Player radio-streaming product.
What is your mission as a company?
Our mission is to create digital products loved by everyone. That means loved by the end users because it is delivering compelling experiences for them; loved by our clients because it is delivering them business value and a return on their investment; and loved by the Candyspace team, because we only employ passionate, ambitious experts who are driven by aiming for the highest possible quality in everything they do.
What sets you apart from the competition?
Our technical and design expertise in the end-user experience of streaming and VOD products. Our engineers, designers and product owners have deep knowledge, built up over many years, of what makes compelling customer experiences and how those experiences drive value for businesses. We can deploy highly-skilled products squads – with the required blend of UX/UI design, engineering, QA, product management and delivery talent – at speed to clients to manage a digital product on a particular platform or enhance features across all platforms.
What is the most exciting thing coming up for you?
We have been driving significant results for our clients through our Conversation Rate Optimisation services, harnessing our arsenal of experimentation/multivariate testing tools and increasing the percentage of users who are taking desired actions (e.g. taking up subscriptions) on their platforms. We are excited about the increasing sophistication and AI enhancements to our tools and our ability to improve a whole range of metrics on streaming products.
What is the biggest issue you think we can address together through cross-industry collaboration?
From Candyspace’s perspective, we’d love to collaborate on optimising end-user experience within the fragmented broadcast and streaming landscape, where viewers face overwhelming choices and often frustration with their experiences. We hope that our expertise in user-centric digital product development, including user research, intuitive information architecture, advanced personalisation, and cross-platform consistency, can help address this challenge. Focusing on streamlining how users find content will drive greater satisfaction, engagement, and a more sustainable digital media ecosystem.
What might people not know about your company?
Candyspace founded the Now+Next initiative, which aims to help redress the gender imbalance in technology businesses. In the UK only 26% of roles in technology businesses are taken by women (Source: Women in Tech Report, 20230.) The problem begins in schools, where not enough girls are taking STEM subjects. Our initiative provides inspiration, connections, experience and pathways into roles in data, design and technology for young women, and so far has reached over 4,000 school girls in London.
