FF Ecosystem and BBC Malkovich

What we liked:
- The way that Andy (and his colleagues ?) have cracked how to reflect content, conversations and data taking place away from bbc.co.uk
- That nod to Being John Malkovich - seeing "our" content through someone else's eyes, that letting go, neatly articulates some of the new challenges for a BBC2.0
- How it also has several answers to the query posed to us by Jeff Jarvis after a recent visit; "shouldn’t your role be to guide viewers/listeners/readers/users/us to the best information and programmes you can help us find"
- As with several of the runners up, this was a design you wanted to have. now. (even if, on reflection, some of our more practically minded colleagues expressed a few concerns!.)
- This is a simple page/front end for a hideously complex amount of data.
- Actually it was the BBC - You - Everybody else slider that swung it. A brilliant idea for a widget.
- And mentioning the tears that had gone into producing the concept.

My boss is a Spurs fan. A devoted Spurs fan. Clearly MattB (the sample user) is a gooner . Don't say we aren't going out on a limb in plumping for this one.

Actually this was really tough. Apologies to everyone who has put aside many hours submitting entries. I think you're supposed to say "You're all winners" at this point. Unfortunately you're not. Just FF Ecosystem are but full respect to everyone who committed hours and effort as part of this competition.

We will be contacting Andy(and his colleagues) today and hopefully getting him into the BBC soonish to hand over his prize.

Full list of the runners up.

So the runners up in no particular order are:

1.Cintrao - BBC Homepage
Things we liked: The integration of widgets, the contextual help (step by step guide to ...), the control of the user over the layout and the boxes.

2.Paul - BBC Active
Things we liked Paul did something that several users did (but we didn't insist on) which was to articulate his vision and thoughts on the competition in extensive detail back on his site. This was a particularly rich example of that. What impressed us also was the smart usage (tucked away in the top rh corner) of a minimised media/radio player and his thoughts (that Martin Belam also cited in one of his reviews) on how to customise that "Radio 1 in the morning, Five live in the afternoon".
Read his notes and you'll also find some musings on Charles Clarke's head.

3.James Willock - BBC Cool Blues
James Willock
Things we liked:
This was an example where the commenters were aligned with the judges..
Tim Dennell said:
" I really like:
Use of lenses to reveal more info.
Use of vector graphics for weather symbols.
To make the customisation button more obvious I’d prefer it to ‘flash’ gently or even flash and say ‘click me’.
Overall a nice personalisation page."
I never say the word nice, though, if I can help it.

4.BBC:refresh - Frankie Roberto
Things we liked:
Here again we've been a bit paradoxical in the sense that we've shortlisted this site although overall there were other designs that we valued more. What swung it was incredible documentation. Frankie really does show us "his working out".

5.BBC 2.0 - Netrix
Things we liked:
Netrix rethought the page almost entirely around the concept of playing out video and audio and sees the homepage entirely as an a/v content guide/EPG.

6.Calvin - BBC Web 2.0ed out
Things we liked:
We envisaged more entries like Calvins. This does border on a web2.0 parody (well we did mention Web2.0 in the brief again and again). Ajax: tick, Tag clouds: tick, RSS: tick yep they're all there. Even the mocked up promo was about Web2.0, that said it handles the representation of personal data across the internet (and the BBC) really well.Yet again there is an Incredible level of documentation, varied mock ups/user journeys and some novel ideas (tag link bubble anyone ?).

7..Croops - BBC Reinvented
Things we liked: This looked real. I wanted to use this.

8. I don't want a portal, I want an information workspace - ukavu -
Things we liked: The title. Although you had me at "I don't want a portal". The only person to include personalised Major League Baseball scores.

9. Jim Schumacher, Sean Schumacher - future is delicious
Things we liked: I liked the nod to the fonts of the Apple homepage (can you spot ?). This is another extensive rethink of entry points for the BBC in far more depth than we envisaged receiving. Worth noting just for the "at a glance" dashboard.

10. Triple John - BBC feeds
Things we liked: It was the 2 fascinating "social media" ideas here that swung it. The promos for Project: Planet Earth ("six billion volunteers required"). Eat that myspace! And the idea of a collaborative wiki based EastEnders script also stood out. This pushed things a bit. This felt like it might happen.

We will (from tomorrow morning) be in touch with all of the above to arrange your prizes and addresses.
So what about the winner. They're picked and waiting but ... I'm afraid we'll be leaving that til...tomorrow.

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. "

In the meantime. Martin Belam who contributed a 16 (count em') part guide to designing and building a bbc.co.uk homepage as part of the blog for the competition has been surveying the entries (over 5 parts..natch) on his personal blog; Currybet.
Reviewing the reboot: bbc.co.uk entries: Part One | Two | Three | Four | Five

There are also further blog coverage of the competition on my del.icio.us reboot tag.

See you on Wednesday.

The response has been fantastic - so fantastic in fact that we are still in the process of reviewing the entries and adding them to the website. If you don't see your entry up yet, please be patient as we're slowly working through all of the entries in our inbox!

A panel of judges, yet to be decided, will convene to sift through the entries and award prizes to the best designs.

We'll let you know the outcome here first!

Finally, can I take this opportunity to once again personally thank everyone who spent time designing and building an entry.

Ben

Once the new page was in the process of being built using the Scrum process I discussed yesterday, I'd expect to user test it again. Now that bits of it are working I would be looking to re-test the assumptions that were made earlier based on the previous testing.

You do have to be careful with this kind of late stage user-testing however, to make sure you put the correct amount of store by the findings. As I think I've mentioned before - when we did user testing on the BBC's search results interface back in 2002, we ended up finding out that something like only a third of people understood how to use the tabs. But we also found that only a third of people understood how to use radio buttons if we designed a page using them. And we knew that only a third of people understood how to use drop-down menus to 'scope' their searches. Which left us pretty much none-the-wiser as to how to improve the interface for everybody. The project ended up trapped in a cycle of producing design iterations that nobody was confident enough to use.

Likewise I've worked on a project where very near the end of the build user testing showed that production staff found the error messages "confusing". In the end I had to make a judgement call that it was a complicated application, and editorial staff were just going to have to get to grips with it - we didn't have time to build a whole new error handling module into the system.

After each scrum cycle has finished, I'd also expect to see QA work done on a project as big as redesigning the BBC homepage. I'd want to see end-to-end testing of the publication chain that made sure the News and Sports headlines were on the page, and I'd want to get some figures about the page footprint (i.e. how much each indivudal browser has to download to display the page) and expected bandwidth consumption to assist in optimising the design. I'd also want the page checked across a whole series of different browsers on PCs, Macs and LINUX machines, to make sure it worked well across all of them on the BBC's supported browser list. That also means checking that the page works for users who have cookie support or JavaScript switched off.

The BBC doesn't (well, didn't) have a dedicated testing team in-house. This work is usually carried out by producers, and then for very technical system testing, the BBC will hire in specialists on a contract basis. The BBC also uses a little volunteer group of testers, usually associated with the DNA powered sites like h2g2 or the message board system on bbc.co.uk - these can be potentially set loose on any new project to give an often very honest appraisal of it. Sometimes a little too honest perhaps for the liking of some BBC producers ;-)

Finally, it would be time for the project manager to concentrate on their most important task - organising a suitably riotous launch party. As a general rule of thumb it is best not to party on the actual night of launch. For one thing, people are liable to be very tired and possibly quite worked up having rushed to meet deadlines, and may not be in the best of moods to enjoy a good party. Secondly, you should always give a new system time to bed down before celebrating. Otherwise, there is a risk that something could go wrong just after launch, and there is no more thankless task than trying to drag software engineers away from a party in order to get broken things fixed at short notice...

Well, I've finished my theoretical entry to the competition - and it looks something like this.

It isn't a finished visual design, more of a coloured-in wireframe, but it pretty much lays out all the content and functionality I'd expect to see on the page.

Anyway I hope that my series of posts has been useful in giving a glimpse behind the scenes of how the BBC's New Media department builds products and services - well, at least how it did before I left the BBC six months ago anyway - and also has given an insight into how many requirements have to be balanced by the current design of BBC homepage.

I see there has been a flurry of new entries published in the gallery over the last couple of days. If you have entered the competition, which, as I say, closes today, then I wish you the best of luck when the judging starts.

We'll accept entries until the end of the day, but if I were you I'd start getting 'em in now! (we know that some of you are being very sneaky and sitting on them until the end! Grr!)

If you need some last-minute inspiration, check out a few of these links:

• Yahoo! Preview Homeage - their new site has lots of AJAXyness going on.
• Day Dream Grahpics - check this site out for some "alternative" design inspiration, plus have a look at the tutorials (Sadly you need to signup [free] to view the designs)
• CoolHomePages.com - an established site, where the name says it all.
• And of course, Martin Belam's blog posts about the BBC Homepage – past, present and future!

Best of luck,

Ben

Essentially it is a process where producers and designers specify a list of what they want software to do in descending order of priority. They then leave the programmers alone to get on with for the length of a scrum cycle. At the end of the cycle the programmers present back what they have developed, which should always be working software. It may not have all of the features yet, but it should be good enough to work. During the development phase this process will be reiterated until the product is ready to launch. At the beginning of each cycle the producers can re-prioritise what is important, remove features or add new features.

As a system of working it should bring two key benefits. Producers get a new version of the software or a system which works at the end of each month, so they can do testing, and show it to people. Programmers get a defined set of requirements to work on which do not change for a given period of time.

Of course, when I say that the producers and designers leave the programmers alone, I don't mean that they are locked in a box incommunicado. A key part of the Scrum process is an update meeting that takes place everyday. Each programmer will state what they worked on yesterday, what they are going to be working on today, and report any problems that are holding them up. The aim is for this meeting to take as little time as possible - project managers, designers and producers are welcome to attend, but forbidden to speak. After the meeting would generally then be the time for the technical lead on the project and the producer to discuss together any concerns they might have. Essentially Scrum should allow programmers to get along with what they do best - programming - whilst forcing producers and designers to focus on making sure their contribution meets the deadline of being ready for the next time they have access to request work.

Of course, my hypothetical reboot:bbc.co.uk entry doesn't have a technical team building it using Scrum, it is just me and my trusty copy of Photoshop ;-)

I wouldn't change much about the current weather display on the homepage, except to remove the map - as various people have pointed out in comments on this blog, it is actually the weather icons that are of interest to the user, not that Sheffield is still vaguely in the same place in the UK. I did very much like the idea in the entry ---stream--- of a user's weather photo going into the space the map currently occupies.

For travel alerts the user would need to supply some kind of location information, and perhaps some information on the mode of transport that interests them. I don't have a car for example, so I'm only interested in news about the roads if it is going to impact on the local buses. When I lived in London I used to commute using the Central Line and the Victoria Line, so I'd want to know if they were up the spout.

Thinking of partnership opportunites, again there is a chance here for the BBC to collaborate with other providers of this type of information - I apologise for being London-centric, but perhaps the BBC could incorporate data supplied directly from the TfL site for example. In any case, I'd imagine the travel news section to be displayed as a ticker - you'd hope that most of the time it would say "No reported problems", but when there was lots of travel information you'd want it all.

Finally I would include some editorial content. I don't think it is the most important thing on the page, but it does give the page a feel of being current - as I've mentioned before, at Christmas I expect to see something Christmas-y there and so forth. My page doesn't have much that conveys topical relevence to what is going on around the UK outside of what is making the news headlines. Although I don't think my ex-colleagues on the homepage will thank me for the even more restricted character count I've given them in the space!

The key to making this a success is whether it is easy to sign up to, and whether users would trust the BBC with their details. I think with the number of people already registered with the BBC, and the general trust in the brand in the UK that would not be too much of a problem. Technically it might be a challenge, and certainly usability wise it would be a challenge.

The technology is already there - you only have to look at Firefox extensions like the Gmail notifier to see that it can be done. My idea is that the BBC would partner with existing webmail providers like Gmail and Hotmail and AOL and Yahoo! Mail to make the technical details smoother. Users would select their mail provider, enter their sign on credentials to the BBC site, and then their most recent messages would be displayed on the page.

The thinking behind it? Email is the most prevelant activity on the internet - and it is the one major internet activity that the BBC is not involved with. By partnering with existing commercial providers, rather than trying to replicate their services, the BBC could bring email into the fold of their online offering, and offer a homepage that was a really complete starting point to explore the web.

Like my 'My Bookmarks' panel, this panel would exhibit three levels of complexity in behaviour.

If you are a user who doesn't take part in any BBC message boards, it would should a rotating teaser of conversations you could join in, rather like the one embedded in the CBBC homepage.

If you use any of the BBC's conversational softwares, then your latest contributions would be displayed here - and I would expect it to work acrors both the DNA powered message boards, and the BBC News Have Your Say boards which bewilderingly use different technology.

The highest level of complexitiy would be an ambition to aggregate a users conversation from all over the web - something like coComment is aiming to do. I'm not 100% how this would be achieved technically - probably a combination of the user clicking a bookmarklet, or building some frightningly complicated API ping framework that blog software and message board software could send to the BBC. But that's probably just me drifting away from design and into technical details again ;-)

I think one thing that I have noticed from the entries in the competition so far is that there seems to be a lot of designs which involves delivering personalised content back to the user once they have chosen it - i.e. my local news, my favourite programmes. Very few seem to be proposing to do transactional personalisation by just tracking actual user behaviour - i.e. here are the pages you visited, the conversations you've had, the competitions you've entered, the votes you've made, the email newsletters you have subscribed to, the video clips that you have watched etc. These kind of features seem to me to have a much lower barrier to entry for people who are not used to personalising their web experience.

However, it might be quite tricky for novice users to get the hang of, so my idea is that this part of the page works on three levels.

The first level is that rather like what 'collective' does in the foot of the pages there, where the site tracks which pages a user has visited. These would then be displayed back to the user when they next visit my reboot:bbc.co.uk homepage in the 'Recent pages' section. This can probably be done with session cookies, and wouldn't even require registration, thus providing some kind of personalised navigation and footprint for users who didn't want to bother with fiddling with personalised features.

The second level is to allow users to 'bookmark' pages on bbc.co.uk. I would propose adding a 'Bookmark this' link either into the toolbar or standard navigation across the BBC site, and when it was clicked it would populate this panel. For more advanced users the BBC could also offer a bookmarklet or Firefox extension and the like to allow them to bookmark pages across the whole of the web. I wouldn't suggest that the BBC build this architecture from scratch - maybe it should consider partnering with Furl or del.icio.us or some other social bookmarking technology.

The third level is for advanced users, who already use a service like Furl or del.icio.us - the BBC should give the option of plugging the URL of a pre-exisiting bookmarking service's RSS feed into the panel - so that the user can continue to use their favourite service, but also get the results displayed back to them when they visit bbc.co.uk.

The concept isn't disimilar to some of the ideas in one of my favourite entries into the competition so far - rudpunk's Home and BBC Box. What I particularly liked was the concept and mock-up of the "BBC Box", where users could save their favourite BBC content and searches, and links from the web, into different folder topics. It looked like a really good idea, and I was impressed with the finer detail in the mock-up, like providing links to a BBC box button for IE and Firefox.

On my reboot:bbc.co.uk page, I've replaced the whole of the directory section that is on the current BBC homepage, with one long line of letters and numbers, which will lead through to the BBC's comprehensive A-Z index.

Now, the BBC homepage used to have a section like this back in 2002, but it was removed when the page was last re-designed in 2004.

I have to say of all the design decision made on the page during my time at the BBC, there were two things I intensely disliked about the 2004 re-design.

The first was the logo. It seemed entirely designed to work well on television and to sit nicely alongside the BBC's current square logos for BBC One, BBC Two etc. In fact, on the TV advertising campaign, the BBC.co.uk logo background pulsed - and I'm sure that was what was originally intended for the web. Yet the graphic is almost exactly the wrong shape for use as a logo on the web, where it ended up spending most of the time - and it forces that large amount of mostly wasted banner space at the top of the current homepage design.

The second was the decision to drop the links through to the individual A-Z Index pages. I never saw the work behind it - but, essentially on a hunch, I just can't agree with it. Putting the A-Z links up front on the homepage must surely cut down the time people waste navigating through the site - I want EastEnders, I click 'E'. I want football I click 'F', or more specifically I can click 'L' for Leeds United. I want to find out about the solar system, I click 'S' for science, or space, or solar system, or The Sky At Night. Or 'P' for planets. Or 'M' for "Mars, Exploring".

A lot of work was put in by a team a talented information architects at the BBC to revamp the classification of content within the A-Z last year, and one of them, Helen Lippell, wrote an excellent article about the work, which is well worth reading - The ABCs of the BBC.

Last week the BBC re-launched its search service. I've been impressed with most of what I've seen so far - the redesign has fixed some real problems with the old search interface. On the other hand, IMHO, it has inevitably fixed some things that weren't broken.

I think to really get on demand at the heart of the search there are still a few tweaks required - although I'm not sure the technology is quite up to it yet.

I'd still want to bring results back from several different datasets, but I'd want to do it more intelligently and dynamically. If a user has searched for a programme title, and it is available on demand via the new iPlayer, then I want that link right up front. I still want news to be treated differently - indexed faster and ranked by date rather than strict relevance - but I want it included subtly like Google, Yahoo! and the new BBC Search do, rather than disguising it in the regular run of results like the old BBC Search did.

I also want BBC and world wide web links integrated into the same results set, but I want the number of results displayed from each to be dynamically intelligent - judge how many results you get back from the BBC and the web to work out how "BBC" a query is, and return more bbc.co.uk links the more "BBC" the query is.

Still, redesigning the just-redesigned BBC search service is perhaps another competition for another day ;-)

Back to my proposed homepage redesign, I'd also retain the current feature that shows some recent popular searches from across the site. Why? Well, partly from selfish nostalgia - I helped in the work to put them there in 2002 in the first place, and don't want to see them removed!

More rationally however, looking at all the elements on the page, once you've made a lot of things personalised, you've broken the "collective experience". Currently when you go to the BBC homepage on February 14th - you know it is Valentine's Day. Likewise, in the run-up to Christmas, the page often has a Christmassy feel. Well, there isn't very much on my redesigned page to achieve the effect of reflecting what is going on in the world that might not be news, but would perhaps be a seasonal ambience. Displaying popular searches is a way of doing that - as they always reflect what the public are currently interested in the UK. It injects a bit automated personality and topicality into the page.

Anyway, I don't know what form the iPlayer is going to take - whether it will be web-based pop-up like the BBC's current Radio Player, or some downloadable software like the iMP trial was - but whatever it is I want a great big chunk of it embedded into my homepage design. I think the BBC will be really missing a trick if it ends up advertising "Get what you want, when you want, where you want - go to double-yew double-yew double-yew dot bee bee cee dot co dot you-kay slash interactive teevee player gizmo thing" rather than having it slap bang in the middle of the homepage, and being able to advertise "Get what you want, when you want, where you want - go to bee bee cee dot co dot you-kay". I really think if the BBC is serious about putting on demand at the heart of its services, it needs to put it at the heart of the homepage.

So what is the player going to do on my redesigned page? Well, I think like a TV you are going to be able to skip across the channels, and I think from each channel you should be able to watch the current live stream, or choose to watch catch-up TV. And I think Radio should be in the mix as well. Back in the UK I used to quite happily record things off Radio 4 onto my TiVo via Digital Satellite, and I think on demand really removes one of the distinctions between radio and TV - that you use different devices.

So my idea is basically a screen with some moving stuff, some tabs at the top to change channels, which will be BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC, CBeebies, News 24 plus two "non-channel" brands - BBC Sport and BBC Weather, plus a BBC Radio tab. Then next to the screen will be a contextual menu for each channel. So, not entirely a huge leap from the BBC's existing broadband pop-up streaming consoles it must be said - although having a moving image slap bang in the middle of the homepage is a bit of a leap - not least in terms of the volume of bandwidth the page will take to serve.

The next question I have is what should the video box be playing when you first load the page? If anything?

I really like UEFA.com's homepage design - but I always think my computer is about to self-destruct when I visit it, because low down on the page it has embedded video which automatically starts with some countdown pips. The BBC Two broadband site is another place with embedded video on the page.

If I was at the BBC, I'd want to get some more research done specifically around this. Does embedded video annoy people? How prominent should the mute button be? Should the video in fact start silent and then offer the user the chance to add sound?

And actually, the more I've thought about it, that is a lot of tabs, and some users will never watch "BBC Four", or have no need for the "CBBC" or "CBeebies" tabs. So perhaps the tabs should be customisable. And I was also thinking, maybe having the ability to add tabs like "BBC Food" and "BBC DIY" would be useful for a lot of users. And I'd need "BBC Sci-Fi" of course. So perhaps there should be a palette of tabs that the user can choose from and have on their version of the embedded iPlayer?

Well, I'm not going to solve those questions myself - so I think for now I'll just specify "some video content with some tabs above it" - it might be BBC One streaming, it might be a specifically put together promo for programmes that day/that week, it might just be a silent generic BBC ident. The tabs might be channels, genres or individual programme brands. Someone else can figure that all out at a later date...

...and that is another important lesson about product development - know your own limits, and know when other people are best-placed to make decisions ;-)