BBC website: detailing the design process behind the BBC homepage

good reading......

[limbo]

For fans of the bbc website, a document detailing the design process behind the BBC homepage. I have not finished reading it myself but some good stuff.

[blackbeltjones.com...]

enjoy :)

[BlobFisk]

Hi limbo,

Great find - thanks a million! I'm happily printing this off now for some reading on the train and plane on Friday!

[limbo]

No worries muchacho

I have a feeling if all at webmaster world decide to print this the rainforests might wince a little ;)

[BlobFisk]

True.... but we have a policy of using nothing but recycled paper here!

unfortunately that applies to the loo roll too! :o

[Shane]

Anyone else having a problem with this web-site?

I can not get the document to open. Tuesday 9:27 Pacific Standard Time

..... Shane

[BlobFisk]

Hey Shane,

Seems that the exposure on WebmasterWorld has affected the doc! If you want you can stickymail me your email address and I'll happily email it to you.

[Shane]

Doing so now .....

Thanks Bob!

..... Shane

[lorax]

Very interesting read! Some nice approaches to gain quantifiable data rather than subjective.

[mole]

yes, very interesting, fascinating, but IMHO the BBC site is one of the most important sites in the UK, possibly in the world.
BUT IT'S TOO SLOW.

Unless you've got something considerably faster than a 56K modem it too painful to bother with.

Anyone got any comments on this aspect of the overall 'design'?

[Eric_Jarvis]

I find the BBC site almost impossible to use...I have some sight problems and can't read the text...and attempting to do a text zoom gives me a complete mess

personally I think it's a lousy design...one done by a design team more concerned about looking clever than producing a decent design...it doesn't work and it doesn't even look particularly good

[Shane]

Don't hold back Eric! (Actually, accessability should be provided, period.)

While I won't comment on the entire design, I think they have a couple of ideas that do merit alot more attention.

Overall, a must read I think.

..... Shane

[lorax]

Execution of the design aside - the book does share some useful information for achieving design goals. In this particular case, the BBC identified one of thier goals for their website as:

"- to be the starting point for users when they log onto the web"

That's a pretty tall order. Trying to be all things to all people is a recipe for failure. But how they got there is fascinating. ;)

[tbear]

I just spent some considerable time waiting for the .pdf file to download and eventually my impatience overcame my loyalty and belief in the BBC.
That says something!
I live in Spain, I consider that I have outlived the automatic belief in the BBC.
I watch BBCworld satellite broadcasts and they 'BORE' me to tears!
I'm sorry, I don't want to offend anyone, but the 'BBC' is not what it was.
I'm a child of 'Listen with mother' etc. I learnt a lot listening and watching the BBC, but I'm afraid those times are gone.
At my age, I have decided to make up my own mind, and the BBC have some learning to do!
I have met many people who worked for the BBC in my life, and most of them were on a free meal-ticket to learning how broadcasting works.
If they put themselves in the front line, they should do so <b>using</b> experience not experimenting with it!
this is not meant to knock the BBC nor Britain, just my middle aged, liberal, point of view!
Bad coding edited by tbear

[hayluke]

I thought this was a really good stuff. Not necessarily the right or wrong way to do it but it's always interesting to see how other people come up with ideas for re-designs..

>I live in Spain, I consider that I have outlived the automatic belief in the BBC.

At least you don't have to pay the licence fee then ;)

[vitaplease]

Interesting, feels like I'm peeking at someones copyrighted material though..

Is this legit presentation?

[limbo]

Wouldn't like to say if it was legit or not. Probably not a good Idea to publish this further ;)

IMHO I think the BBC website has managed to cope excellently with the navigation quandry that must have been a headache when trying to publish this amount of data across such a wide variety of subjects.

I am a regular user and where as I do agree with some points metioned above I have to say I think they do a bloody good job over all. My day to day visits to this site range from film, sport(footy mainly), radio, TV listings, news and evening meal recipes - all are easy to find, quick loading (56k also) and well detailed.

Not much complaint from me.

<added> And I work for the opposition </added>

[BlobFisk]

I'm wondering about the legitamacy of it also - but there seems to be no copyright information on it at all and you can also get it here [playbacktime.com] (with more explaination).

As for the BBC site - I only use the news.bbc site, but I really like it - although the recent design changes are not as effective as the old look and feel - but they are more standards compliant and use layers as opposed to tables I think!

[tosspot17]

As a bit of aside note, there's an article here [media.guardian.co.uk], which talks about the BBC website.

Apparently they're cutting jobs and funding, but on the plus side, they're aiming to make the pages download a bit quicker.

<added> - OK, ukgimp beat me to it: [webmasterworld.com...] </added>

[hayluke]

They currently have a budget of about £74 million? I knew they invested a lot in their sites but that's a HUGE amount of money.