As designers, we tend to fill our own homes with the objects we admire, those in which functionality and aesthetics come together. But until now, this has never included our television set-top boxes. These have always been the sort of black sheep of the consumer electronics market, their product design steered by OEMs, rather than the service providers themselves. The result? A market saturated with comparable form factors. A cost-driven standard has prevailed over 99% of the market until this year, constraining design to a universal system of metal housing and plastic faces for every device – a form that, while we understand, we have never loved. British Sky Broadcasting, the largest digital television provider in the UK, decided to take charge of its own design language for the first time ever, working with frog to push innovation into this market. The new product family sets Sky apart from its competitors, using molded plastic and organic forms to offer a physical expression of the brand's unique identity. And we, at least those of us in Europe, can finally have a set-top box that holds its own beside our other electronics.

Rather than design a single offering, frog and Sky teamed up to create an entirely new design language, scalable across a variety of price points and consumer markets. The focus was on simplicity: ease of use, purity of form. A signature organic shape was crafted from molded plastics, clearly distinguishing the device from the competition. A gentle curve of buttons runs the length of the unit, seamlessly integrating functionality and aesthetics. Iterative testing with Sky executives and users alike ensured that the set-top box connected the identities of company and consumer. Here was a device that took personal entertainment seriously, understanding the place of electronics and entertainment in the self-definition of the individual.

Because each OEM uses a different circuit board and structural layout of components, integrating these differences within seemingly identical products was of the utmost importance. By working closely with OEMs early on in the design process, we made sure that every aspect of our design was feasible from a manufacturing perspective, ensuring a consistent quality of production.

The resulting product family has reinvigorated what was a visually stagnant market, bringing to life the Sky brand values and encouraging stronger connections between the company and its consumers. The move has been well received in both the marketplace and the press, with a waiting list for shipments and a broad range of media coverage. Subscription rates for the HD box alone nearly doubled in Q3 this year, entering 96,000 homes in the fastest-ever consumer adoption of a Sky product. British gadget magazine T3 has called the Sky set-top box the "most wanted gadget of 2006," and has recently inducted the device into its honorary hall of fame.