With regards to my as-of-yet unentered reboot:bbc entry, I want to discuss where I’m coming from on a design. My whole design can be viewed as a response to the change in focus brought up by the Beeb themselves.

The overall stated goal is to incorporate personalization and wisdom of crowds to the current BBC homepage. Unfortunately, the homepage can really only scratch the surface of this sort of change. What I am trying to do is bring in the content that they want while maintaining what it means to be the BBC homepage.

My first comp threw everything out. Really none of the standard design elements persisted in the design, which is good for a first comp, but usually not as good for a final product. A final product has users that have used the product it is replacing for (in this case) years. A site of the magnitude of the BBC is not meant to have major changes in its workflow. In the end, any true redesign will be more focused on upgrading technology and incorporating content as opposed to “going back to the drawing board” as they have suggested.

That said, the contest itself has told us to throw out the baby, bath, and bathwater. And we must respond in kind.

I focused (in both comps so far) as much on user-created as BBC-created content. My design should not represent an end-point of the incorporation of technology but a front face. I must admit to a degree of confusion with regards to some of the BBC’s stated goals. For example, by enabling content creation, does the BBC expect to begin hosting blogs, social bookmarks, pictures, movies, and possibly even email? The resources to handle all of that is not easy to come by. But, hey, if they do want to move in that direction, please allow me to volunteer for a position supporting that infrastructure. I’ve always wanted to move to the UK.

Snarking aside, my design does not pull in the large amount of video content that the BBC already has, nevermind the video content they are looking to add. There is one simple reason for this: this sort of material does not belong on the front page. The front page is what people set as their homepage in the browsers, both at home and work. The last thing an employee will want is some video blaring through his speakers when he shows up in the morning. I know I didn’t when Apple put the new ads on their homepage.

Also, a nice feature that I haven’t included (at least not yet), would be some sort of suggestion engine. I would like the homepage to present me with links throughout the day that it would expect me to find interesting. This adaptive capability would probably link in with the social bookmarking feature I have shown, just taking it a little further.

As a purely visual critique on the current homepage, I don’t like all of the blue. This preference drove my decision to step away from it with the second comp. Knowing my own tastes, I will probably continue that spiral away, but it shouldn’t take away from the other goals in the design. Those are most important.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Writings, web2.0, design, future, reboot:bbc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.