Sky Unattended Coding Test
Replacing Sky Movies in the UK & Ireland, the launch of Sky Cinema in July 2016 provided customers with the ability to enjoy even more of the biggest and best movies closer to cinema release than any other subscription service. All available live, on demand or on the go.
Building on more than a quarter of a century of heritage in home cinema, Sky Cinema customers will have access to a new movie premiere every day, an even bigger library of on demand films, more pop up channels as well as better HD picture and sound quality , taking them one step closer to the cinema experience. Consumers can enjoy the biggest ever line-up of blockbuster and classic movies on demand, with around 1,200 films available to view instantly, an increase of 20%. More than half of all the films watched on Sky are on demand with one billion downloads or streams in the last two years alone. So there’s no doubt that content is one of the most important things to Sky! As a result how content is made available and recommended to customers needs careful consideration and Sky are always looking for innovating ways of doing this.
The Sky Marketing team have asked the Software Engineering Academy to create a recommendations application which will enable customers to view content Sky has on offer based on their mood. We have called this application ‘Moodslider’.
Your task is to create this, a web application that will display content based on what customers tell us their mood is. Once they have made their selections, the application should recommend some content and display it on the page e.g. if a customer states they are sad on the Moodslider, we should be recommending content that makes them feel happy so perhaps a comedy. In addition you will need to provide a feature that will enable content data to be uploaded. Your application should also be Sky branded.
Firstly, create a webpage similar to that shown below. The page should display four sliders and a series of emotions. Below the sliders, you should display a series of programme slots that should be made up of an image and title. However at this stage, they should show a ‘No content’ message in the image and title placeholders and the sliders should be set to the centre. You should allow space for 5 programmes. Please also include a navigation bar to make it easier to move around your application.
Secondly, create a facility where you can upload and process a data file. You can use the data file below as an example but please ensure you add additional data in order to create a more content rich application. You should source your own images and place them in a folder. However the path to the images should be written as part of the data file. The upload facility should be accessed via the ‘upload’ link in the navigation bar and return you to the moodslider page once the upload has taken place.
Once your content upload is complete, the customer should be able to move the sliders to suit their mood and the application should display a selection of the content you have uploaded which should be based on the preferences they have made e.g. if a customer states they are sad on the Moodslider, we should be recommending content that makes them feel happy so perhaps a comedy. You should focus on moving one of the sliders and retrieving content, however extra credit will be given for retrieving content based on moving multiple sliders and therefore creating a profile based on multiple moods.
We would prefer that you use a language such as Java, Javascript, Ruby, PHP etc. Whilst you are free to use any technologies to achieve this task, it’s important that you show us evidence of your own coding ability. You don’t need to worry about cross browser capability. Once you’re done, zip up your code, images and any test XML you have created. Email it to us at skytechacademy@gmail.com within 3 days of the date of the email.