NCAA's March Madness Second Screen App--a great 2012 app made even better for 2013

If you haven't been paying attention to March Madness, then you may still appreciate this for the second screen value alone.  Last year, this app demonstrated one of the best UIs and second screen feature sets in the industry (see last year's review here).  Developed by Turner Sports, the app continues to lead the way in terms of a Stimulating or Enhanced experience and is leading the market in Converged Experiences (where the app behaves both as a Companion experience and a Viewing experience).

They added some great new features this year, while maintaining
the most desirable features from last year.  I took the opportunity to try the app out in a number of scenarios this year: live while watching a game in Philadelphia (thanks Digitalsmiths), as a companion app while watching at home, and as a converged experience (companion and viewing) on the iPad and iPhone while in a long car trip.  The best features of 2013 are:

• Ability to authenticate with your Pay TV provider and see the game anywhere (presumably only in the US) streamed live to your device.
• Ability to set alerts either for your favorite teams or for close games or potential upsets (allowed me to catch a number of great game finales).
• Ability to observe a "Twitter heatmap" of the most socially engaged moment, and then to share a video clip from that moment on Facebook or Twitter.
• The ability to enter and maintain your bracket picks as well as observe the actual tournament bracket.

I'd love to see:

• More synchronized content for the companion experience.  Idea
  
  s would be to allow the viewer to see stats for players update in real-time while the game is taking place (harder to manage the UI in the converged experience of course).
• More metadata driven "best moments" clips.  While there is a good game summary (that looks like it was edited by a human), they have the capability to show me the slam dunks, buzzer beaters, etc, of my favorite team or of that day or weekend, which is something they previously offered on their web experience.
• Better curated twitter feeds.  There is a social feed UI, but they need to give better curation options (ie from sportscasters, from current players or previous stars, etc).  They did a good job of allowing you to filter the feeds by team.
• They need to manage the time delay from the live video feed better in relation to the live score updating (with no delay).  There were often times when using the converged experience, especially the audio feed while driving, that the live score updated 30 seconds before the audio (or video) did, creating a spoiler situation.

With only 3 games to go in the tournament,

I would highly recommend you try the experience on Saturday or Monday.  I will be in Las Vegas Saturday evening preparing for "2nd Screen Sunday @ NAB", and continuing to utilize this great second screen experience.  Give me a shout on Twitter (@ChuckParkerTech) if you are there.

Want to find out more about how we have segmented the apps based on consumer features, check out our research or come see us for 2nd Screen Sunday at NAB on Sunday, April 7th, at the Encore Hotel from 1-6pm (cocktails follow)--there is a 30% discount for conference attendees on the research.

@ChuckParkerTech

@S32Day