Building my rebooted:bbc.co.uk homepage - #1: The must haves
I haven't fully checked the legalese of the competition - which I suggest you do if you are planning to enter as there are some quite important bits about which types of BBC content you can and can't include in any working prototypes - but I'm working on the assumption that the standard clause that employees of the BBC, their relatives, and their pets, cannot enter the competition also stretches to apply to people writing on the competition blog.
That doesn't mean, of course, that I haven't got lots of ideas of what I would want to do to the homepage, having had a role in managing it for 18 months. During that time I didn't oversee any permanent design changes to the page - having inherited it after the last major re-design in May 2004, although I did take part in the previous re-design before that in 2002.
So what I thought I might do for this blog over the next couple of weeks is gradually describe how I would have put a competition entry together, and hopefully along the way illustrate how this kind of project gets done within the BBC once it has been commissioned.
Most new media projects at the BBC start with an 'understand' phase - where the project team try to get a handle on what has been commissioned, what the objectives are, what the audience requirements are, what the technical constraints are etc, so that they can move on to the 'design' phase.
(In fact - I spotted the following in the reboot:bbc.co.uk FAQ: "In BBC design language this is just our understand phase. We will be using this competition and a lot of other analysis to help us understand what bbc.co.uk should be...one day.")
The first thing that I want to establish, as part of my 'understand' phase, are the things that absolutely have to be on my page - so I started by making a list of those. In any project it is good to get these things defined up-front, so you don't suddenly get surprised at the end when you have all the designs signed off, and then somebody pipes up with "but where is the...".
I think there are five things that any design of homepage at http://www.bbc.co.uk has to have.
BBC logo or branding
Dull but true - unless anyone can show me a major portal page without a logo.
Legal blurb links
Also dull but true. Well, I don't know if it actually is a legal requirement to carry them on the front page of the site, but it is good manners to have your terms and conditions of use and privacy policy displayed at the front door.
Search box
It doesn't matter how many other links there are on the page - if you've got a website with literally millions of pages, like the BBC has, people are going to need to be able to search it.
The News
Although the BBC has a perfectly good news based front page at http://news.bbc.co.uk, the page at http://www.bbc.co.uk still attracts an audience seeking the latest news, especially during major news events. The 'news' section heading link is the most clicked link on the current BBC homepage, and on July 7th more people in the UK visited www.bbc.co.uk to find out news about the bomb attacks in London than visited the two largest non-BBC news websites in terms of figures (Sky and the Guardian) put together. Now, I should point out that I've no idea yet if the news on my page is going to be a list of headlines, an embedded video, or a robotic voice reading the headlines out to me like Ted Gilchrist's Rebotocast of BBC World News Feed backstage.bbc.co.uk prototype. However, I know there is going to be some news on my redesigned page.
Contact the BBC link
It isn't just another case of good manners, although I think it is good practice for all web sites to have prominent 'contact us' details. I think as a Licence Fee funded organisation in the UK there is an obligation for the BBC to use the new media channels as a way to improve and increase accountability - and being able to get straight in touch with the BBC from the homepage fits the bill for that.
Arguably there may be a sixth required item. All pages on the bbc.co.uk site have a link through to a low graphics or text only version for accessibility reasons. At the moment I am assuming that my new page is going to be so brilliantly coded that it will be a beacon of accessibility in the web landscape. However, I'm going to keep that under review, and note that there is a requirement to check at a later stage in the project whether the page is fully accessible, or whether it needs links to a more accessible version placed on the page.
OK, so that's me done ;-)
Well, my entry is very "classic Google"-like so far isn't it? In fact it isn't that dissimilar to the BBCi Search homepage that used to be on the BBC site - all you need to do is add the News feed in there, and you've got it.
Still, it is far too early for me to be dealing in visuals yet. The next step will be to have an ideas generating session where I try and think of all the things that I might want to put on the re-designed page.
- 27 Apr 2006 12:26
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Can we post suggestions etc to you?
And: Although there's a big blue 'Submit your design' button at the top of the page it's not clear how to use it. Is it to add an attachment? Are we supposed to include a screen shot? A web page saved as HTML?
Some more explicit instructions about what you expect and the form it takes would be useful.
By the way why is this buried inside the site?
It might be worth finding in a way[s] of asking people for comments about what they like/don't like about the Homepage and what they primarily visit it for.
I'd also visit a BBC open centre and watch people new to the Internet use the homepage. By no means are all Internet users going to easily make the jump to RSS, video mobile downloads etc.
Older people (local radio listeners etc) find web 1.0 difficult enough.
There some instruction on how to enter at http://open.bbc.co.uk/reboot/s/faq/#sendapic
Basically you need to get your prototype or image or wireframes hosted somewhere on the web, then submit a URL to the BBC via the big blue button
>> Can we post suggestions etc to you?
Sure, you can either leave comments on the blog - or head over to the message board at http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbpointsofview/F4170826
Hi Martin
Enjoying your commentary on the blog.
I understand the BBC's desired outcome from this competition is to better "understand" what people may want from the BBC homepage, but there are 2 issues you seem to be keeping under your hat at the moment:
1. What does the BBC expect the homepage to do for it as an organisation? (In a commercial context, what are the "business requirements"?) Given the attention a homepage receives from senior managers in most orgs it's essential designers understand this very clearly and can balance the inevitable challenges that differences of opinion in the org will entail.
2. Why is the homepage so important? It is one page out of a site of millions. On our site (major UK e-commerce player) only 40% come through the homepage. In my experience it's the often invisible elements of the web experience such as the info architecture that lead to a coherent site.
Interested on your views on the above.
Cheers
DJ
> Enjoying your commentary on the blog.
Thank you - I've been enjoying writing it.
> 1. What does the BBC expect the homepage to do for it as an organisation? (In a commercial context, what are the "business requirements"?) Given the attention a homepage receives from senior managers in most orgs it's essential designers understand this very clearly and can balance the inevitable challenges that differences of opinion in the org will entail.
Well, I can't speak for senior BBC execs at the moment - but when I was managing it I always understood the aim of the page to be to something along the lines of:
- showcase the breadth and depth of BBC content via the search, browse and promo area
- increase reach of BBC online services by allowing users to successfully navigate to content that interested them
- increase awareness of BBC online services through carrying marketing messages
- provide a one-stop shop for news, sport and weather headlines
- act as a trusted guide to the web for the UK via the web search option (which for some time was the default, rather than the bbc.co.uk search)
I've probably forgotten one or two others
> 2. Why is the homepage so important? It is one page out of a site of millions. On our site (major UK e-commerce player) only 40% come through the homepage. In my experience it's the often invisible elements of the web experience such as the info architecture that lead to a coherent site.
Good question. When I left (Xmas 2005) the homepage was getting (I think) around 3.5m users per week - which is around (also I think) 25% of the users to BBC.co.uk as a whole going through it. However, I think that the onus on the homepage was always because:
1) the organisation felt it was the showcase for the whole multi-million pound investment in online services by the BBC
2) the homepage and the BBC News homepage were almost always cited in any criticisms by Government and non-Government bodies alike
3) because of the BBC's perceived role in driving digital take-up, the front door *had* to work for inexperienced internet users
I think most importantly though, for a television dominated organisation, which the BBC is, the homepage at bbc.co.uk is the online equivalent of the BBC One broadcast stream for the BBC. It is the default page of the website, in the same way that channel one used to be the default channel on people's televisions. It should never break, never have errors, should have 100% availability and near universal reach just like BBC One. And in times of national emergency or major cultural events in the UK, like BBC One, it should be the place that people naturally turn to for their information.