Reboot:bbc.co.uk on Slashdot
There has been a thread about the reboot:bbc.co.uk competition on self-confessed "News for nerds" site Slashdot this week.
The thread was titled "What Do You Want on a News Website?" and so a lot of the discussion was about how people would redesign http://news.bbc.co.uk rather than the BBC homepage, but a couple of interesting things came out in the thread.
One was that the requirement for personalisation wasn't just about what you want to see, but also about what you don't want to see, but also what you don't want to see.
SomethingBig wrote:
The thing is, local & national news, traffic, weather, etc - I want them all. But I want them in a way that's not cluttered. Not over loaded with information... - click the heading and the section unfolds. I'd also like the choice to disable certain sections if I didn't like them - something like Google's homepage is for Google's account holders.
Personalisation of content was king with the Slashdot crowd
I currently get my news from three places: My Yahoo!, Netvibes (when I get comfortable enough about their privacy practices, it'll be my new home page), and Google News. The thing they have in common is the ability to do massive customization of their home page.
it would be cool if there was some kind of "stories you may like" feature made, that pulls together some keywords. So if you tend to read stories about gas prices, and there is a story about record breaking oil costs, it would go on some kind of separate personalized list.
One idea I thought had potential was a kind of half-way house between full personalisation and the current one-size-fits-all homepage that the BBC has. foundme said:
there should be a few templates (for on the spot makeover) to cater normal users who can't be bother to customize the site. Eg an Entertainment-Template will have more news on entertainment-related news, and a bit of other news.
I liked it a lot - the idea that users don't have to fill in some lengthy set of options, but could instead just say I'm a "football" kind of person, or a "Holby City" kind of person, or a "Tweenies" kind of person, or a "Radio 4" kind of person, and get a homepage that wasn't totally personalised, but suited them better.
Whilst again it was news focused, I also liked this comment by grogdamighty:
I'm not a coder or in web design, so I can't tell you how to make a simple but elegant interface. I can tell you what should be readily apparent to anyone asked these questions: I want exactly what I want, when I want it. That's what I like about Google News - if I want sports news on top, that's where I put it; if I want a custom search for all new pharmaceuticals, I can do it. Major news websites should take note that people want to be able to decide what news they see.
There's a reason why most people flip directly to a specific section of the newspaper. It's time the newspaper flipped for us.
The current bbc.co.uk is more magazine than newspaper, but the BBC should still find out how to make it flip for the audience.
Respect was due to one Anonymous Coward (as Slashdot brands contributors who don't register) who said:
You do realise that news is only a small portion of what the BBC does, right?
My favourite comment though was from baadger:
Do you think they'd notice if I submitted their old design [archive.org] as my own and claimed that laptop? xD
Funnily enough Slashdot has also launched a competition to redesign their site, and the co-incidence was picked up on by JavaScriptSearch in a news item yesterday. Slashdot has a gallery of competition entries online. I see that whilst the BBC is getting criticism that a design competition is ripping people off, Slashdot is getting entertaining entries with annotations like:
I added some fins to lower wind resistance. And this racing stripe here I think is pretty sharp
The funny thing about it is that as far as I can tell, Slashdot intend to fully implement the CSS of their brand new freebie winning design permanently, whilst the BBC don't.
- 29 Apr 2006 09:02
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If the bbc web developers stopped reading slashdot all day, you might have time to redesign the bbc home page yourself.
How about doing the UK a favour and putting a firefox logo on the home page.
What I can't understand is all the viciousness directed at the BBC and their designers by people on this blog. When they respond to your comments and criticisms, you return fire with further criticisms. Jeeez.
>> If the bbc web developers stopped reading slashdot all day, you might have time to redesign the bbc home page yourself.
Well, I'm obliged to point out that I'm not a BBC web developer - I'm just a guest here. But I'm also obliged to point out that I don't think you get the best TV programmes if they are made by directors who never watch anything but what they have directed themselves, or the best radio shows from producers who only listened to their own output. New Media is the same - part of being a good developer is being aware of what is going on in the industry around you.
>> How about doing the UK a favour and putting a firefox logo on the home page.
Well, it does sometimes link to Wikipedia which is a start ;-)