Reboot bbc.co.uk

??????? is all i can say!

i have no words for this. very disappointing, sorry.

Perhaps I've misunderstood the purpose of this competition. I was expecting something that realises new ways to present BBC content, opens it up to use contribution and allows a certain amount of user content tailoring and better linking to external content on other interoperable websites.

But your winner is disappointing for so many reasons. Whilst I note that his ‘content slider’ is moved all the way over to ‘You’ there is no BBC content on the page. At all? Last I checked the BBC was the best broadcaster in the world and yet there's no TV or Radio or Podcast links, there's no mention of BBC News, no iPlayer (which has to be the most interesting thing you're working on at the moment), nothing on the BBC programme search you beta'd earlier in the year.

It's a perfectly nice example for building ‘GenericSocialNetworkSpaceWorld.com’ but I hope to all that's good that isn't really the direction you want for BBCi.

As much as welcoming in a world of external content to the BBC is commendable and desirable in many ways, rewarding a design that just sweeps away the BBC's own outstanding content terrifies me.

I agree with these comments. its as though theyve ignored the the first question of web design, "Why do people goto the bbc website?". Because they provide trust-worthy news, sport and other interesting media. Not because other people are looking at something similar.

If the BBC adopted a design like this, i'd never come back to the bbc site and stay at the online guardian site.
I dont even think the deisgn is that strong either, with many alignment, font and cosistancy errors. If feel sorry for the people who put strong design and content ideas that got ignored.

A dissapointing end to a good competition.

It's unfortunate to read "sour grapes" comments here, but I suppose that's to be expected given the stiff competition. I think the design is gorgeous! - simple, easy to navigate, lots of options and control, VERY "web 2.0," and NOT focused on BBC content but on the user. I could see myself getting addicted. Well done.

Let us not ask "Why do people go to to the BBC website?".
Let us ask "Why might people go to to the BBC website?"

I think all of the bad things which have been stated above are answered here.
http://open.bbc.co.uk/reboot/gallery/2006/05/bbc_malkovich.html

I too was surprised by the chosen winner.

Whilst I congratulate those involved and recognise that the design has certain merits, I feel that it fails to answer the original brief or seek to challenge and extend our perceptions of the long-term direction of the BBC's UK homepage.

My own impression is that the competition has been largely forgotten and shunted into a backseat. The final decision appears to have been made half-heartedly, spurred on by prompts that the judging deadline had passed and been forgotten, and I'm not convinced that the chosen winner possesses qualities that clearly seperates it from the competition.

There were some much more obvious choices for the winner (even from the runner up selection), and whilst I didn't enter the competition so can hold no bitter feelings, I struggle to understand why the BBC came to the decision that it did.

If the BBC are to encourage future participation from the public (who gave a large amount of time that would be worth tens of thousands were it to be tendered), then they need to invest more time in reassuring participants that their time will be rewarded and appreciated. They might also like to consider a public voting system for future competitions. At the very least, they could use this to give a "readers choice" award, and at best it might hold some influence over the final winner and runners up.

Winning design looks like an early version of MySpace to me. There are clearly better designs in the runner up list. Very disappointed for them.

Seems like this was all about what you can see, rather than what you cannot see.

The BBC website is rather large.

Surely a competion for, say, the Radio $ Homepage would have been more realistic?

Well, they did say what they were looking for:
“We need to come up with a personalised BBC homepage that will provide users with a starting place for their journey through BBC content and beyond.”
(But personally, I just hope any personal (individualised?) page is kept off the front page.)

I still don’t think they are looking for an actual design to use. It was a collective brainstorming session, that’s all. I was more interested in contributing to the idea stream than coming up with an ready to use design.
Maybe it’s me but I’m already seeing ideas from reboot (and elsewhere) on the BBC site. No one designs in isolation from influences. After all some designer was the first to come up with ‘personalised pages’ on a site in the first place.

Personally I most liked the entry by Eric Stoltz. (Yes, I entered too) But then I like the idea of seeing the homepage as a magazine. But Eric’s an established, professional designer so it’s bound to look slick. You can look at his portfolio on: ericstoltz.com/portfolio/index.html

(I also really like the new Yahoo! homepage. The Beeb (& everyone) could do worse than keep at close eye on what the Yahoo guys are doing. They’re leading the game at the moment. The ‘take a peek’ feature, for example, to let people get used to their redesign it before it became the default homepage was such a great idea.)

But I really enjoyed the whole reboot experience. Everyone’s brimming with creativity and ideas. Picking a winner that’ll please most people is well nigh impossible.
I’m sure people will use ideas from this in their future projects. And it’s good for portfolios.
Let’s do it again in two years time!

PS. If all you web designers are interested in the idea of web community design events then look at cssreboot.com
No prizes, just an annual opportunity to focus creativity and show off their talents. 100’s take part, often redesigning their own site.

Future broadband technology development means "the BBC website" will become "the BBC" in time.
As such, for sure "Web 2.0" issues are important. But as we go forward, the majority will still consumer rather than create.
And they will do so from 10 ft away on the sofa with remote control in hand.
Hence, "BBC 2.0" must also cater for the lean back "broadband zapper" as well as the lean forward "broadband hacker".

I thought Andy's entry had some solid ideas. Perhaps some similar ideas were suggested in other entries, but his remains well thought-out and conveys the ideas in clear/concise manner. I had my eyes set on the grandprize too, but I feel no shame losing to the winner that the Judges have picked. He's clearly put a lot of thought into the contest, as many of us have, and his entry was an excellent pick IMO.

oh dear - lose did we.

I think it's so simple its great.

Simplicity is hard.

Stop looking at the visual execution and realise what this means.

Its a great idea. It's my bbc, which doesn't have to include BBC content at all.

I'm in the middle, I matter.

BOOOO!!! I'm not creative and did not participate but c'mon, a white backround with a normal outline!

Sorry but this just stinks. So it has a slider big deal. I think there were much better designs and ideas produced.

This winner cleverly picked up on some good ideas from earlier entries and put his/her own spin on them.

How fair is that this person seems to work for one of the top agencies too? What are you going to do next, have a football competion and let Zidane or Rooney play?

Guess its not what you know but who you know isn't it.

Yuck, dullsville. Perfect for screen-readers and indirect access through RSS.

Yeah, White -- the new Vanilla!

I'd go back to the drawing board before this becomes a real embarassment.

This is SAD:

"Actually it was the BBC - You - Everybody else slider that swung it. A brilliant idea for a widget."

No wonder Stephen Hawking is asking "How can the human race sustain another 100 years?"

Very SAD!

I don't like the winning design. As a matter of fact, I like many of the runners up better.

I just don't get why that particular design won.

The winning idea has strong potential for empowering people to use the BBC content in their own way:

"I’m thinking that I can have a BBC View set up for a class that emphasises content needed for the unit or syllabus and students can then further re-mix this with the views for other units or classes"

http://bodmas.org/blog/?p=433

With Web 2.0 there seems to be a danger that websites (like this design) will be entirely "move around the content you've created yourself" rather than "here's fresh content we want to present to you".

On the other hand, I suppose a largely user-generated BBC (I'm thinking citizen journalism too) will mean a cut in the license fee.

Or am I totally deluded? :)

Has anyone watched EPIC 2014?
Doesn't this redesign invoke those very concepts?

http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/

This is hugely disappointing. Even on first sight, the winner's design did not hook me in. It is generic and has little character. I am puzzled that the search bar is at the very bottom.

Sorry but after going through the runner-ups, I am appalled at how the winner was chosen.

I trust someone will do the right thing.

"My own impression is that the competition has been largely forgotten and shunted into a backseat. The final decision appears to have been made half-heartedly, spurred on by prompts that the judging deadline had passed and been forgotten, and I'm not convinced that the chosen winner possesses qualities that clearly seperates it from the competition." - That is exactly what I was thinking as well. It seems like really poor judging almost arbitrary. Most of the runner-ups are better then the winner.

So what the competition achieved? It was a ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ event. And you can’t get more Web 2.0 than that. (If WoC is new to you type it into Google and look it up on Wikkiopedia.)

Roughly one third of entries used tag clouds. Roughly one third were about personalising a page to get very focused local information – weather, traffic, local news etc.
And that’s telling the BBC that that’s how people are starting to interact with websites and what they expect from websites.
So expect to see experiments with tagging soon, possibly combined with some kind of bookmarking service. The obvious next step would be to track the pages you go to and then make suggestions as to related pages and topics.
I would also expect to see some way where people can get together in on place the kind of information they want. Even if it’s just a page where you collect RSS feeds.