Reboot bbc.co.uk

Judging reboot: thanks

Jem Stone

Before (sorry for the suspense) I get on to announcing the winners for the competition. A few thoughts.

1.Thanks
We were bowled over by the # of entries for the competition. In the end we received 138 designs, prototypes and mock ups. In retrospect we probably didn't give you enough time to enter and then, in the end, dithered over announcing the winners (in fact we still are) so so a very British cheers and all that and thanks for sticking with us.

2.The Judging
The entries have been judged by myself; Jem Stone (I'm an executive producer at bbc.co.uk ) and Tom Loosemore who is bbc.co.uk's Head of Strategic Innovation and is leading a project to radically overhaul the BBC website. We also had input from Martin Belam who was a guest poster to the reboot blog whilst we were running the competition, and thanks to the hundreds of comments and blog posts about the competition. In doing the shortlisting we had a big steer from the entrants to the competition and the users of the site.

Also as part of Tom's project a selection of the designs were also evaluated by on a bbc.co.uk away day (and no they didn't play croquet) by the heads of dept for the various BBC web teams.

3.Criteria
We were looking at a number of criteria. Surprisingly, despite our pleadings there were v.few that did, in the end take it in Ben's phrase "all the way back to the drawing board". Bucking the trend were these three entries (from the same team ?) all received at the same time; Matthia's; BBC icecubed, Benno's Complete Shuffle Box, and Carina's BBC Shuffle combination box that had a real poke at navigation metaphors but that was about it. The overwhelming pattern was boxes and tables and panels and lists.
The other key criteria was exploring greater relevance and if i must say it then that (horrible) word; personalisation. Inspired by a number of speeches and interviews with Ashley Highfield before the competition started where he talked about coming up with a "a personalised BBC homepage that will provide people with a starting place for their journey through the BBC's content and beyond.", many of the entries focused on the concept of share. Several were actually called mybbc.

Finally with the impending launch of the BBC's iPlayer we were looking for (and got) all manner of attempts to crack how to showcase and highlight video content.

4.Special thanks for trying to subert the whole thing
You didn't win but we had good fun with Chris Hammond's streamlined portal, Matt Sephton's Ceefax tribute and we had a soft spot for NIrelan's empty screen; "I am sending you a blank page becuase this contest proves that what you need to do is give the content away in a format that everyone can use to design thier own version of the site.". Perhaps one day (he says wistfully) the rather complex and vast BBC site will be structured in such a way that we really will be able to do a CSS reboot competition.

5.We had no idea that Slashdot would run a reboot competition at exactly the same time offering the same prize(s). It was a genuine coincidence. Honest.

6.Finally: We want to reboot, not rip-off. Just to echo Ben's post from back in early May. This has been a valuable process for us as we go through the process of rethinking bbc.co.uk. It was part of a number of inputs. As Tom said in a note explaining how we used the entries "internally" - "It helped freshen up our thinking and stop us from getting too parochial. It's proved very helpful to have the 'voice of the user' in the room, albeit manifested as A3 printouts of entries covering the walls. "

• 05 Jul 2006 10:28