About
When you currently go to the BBC website what's the first thing that you see? Try and answer this question from the top of your head, without looking. You can't. There is so much there. BBC has a wealth of content like no other organization in the world, and the homepage tries to show it all at once.
The premise for my idea is that clutter is unnecessary and counter intuitive.
The first thing that you see when you go to my version is the dark blue navigation column and the interactive content area it controls. As well the 'BBC Today' news area on the right.
The first item on the list is 'Radio', the white box area under it lists a brief of information for it. If you were to click on the next item ('TV') the radio white box would collapse and the TV one would expand. (See: new www.yahoo.com on the right for effect, this is achieved purely with Ajax)
The content area (where it says "content goes here") would have the radio stations listed via a hierarchical system similar to the Radio section in the iTunes media player. (See: www.apple.com/itunes) This is a more effective and space economical way to find the station you are looking for. Once you are at the desired station you are presented with scheduling information and an internet radio feed if one is available. (detachable player window)
The TV and other items on the list work in much the same way.
Search
Next up is the search area. Currently, the BBC homepage has a duplicate of this on the left and the top right. This is unnecessary, and is a waste of space and could be cause for confusion in my opinion.
I have created a single, integrated search box with a drop down menu with the following selections: 'All of the BBC', 'BBC News & Sport', 'BBC Audio & Video', 'The Web'.
Browsing the Directory
The directory is simply HUGE. It takes most of the space the homepage has, and towards what end? Why have such an extruding eyesore and distraction (human eye is drawn towards the left) all over the page.
The directory is not something you want to be looking at most of the time, but only very occasionally. Hence, it shouldn't even be seen without scrolling down. Instead of it being vertical I made it horizontal.
Also, having too many items makes it that much harder to locate the one you are looking for. I decreased the number of items listed. The 'Full Directory' link will bring you to a page dedicated to this if wanted. Also, a suggestion would be to have the items from the directory listed on the main page be decided upon by popularity.
BBC Local
Selection of your locale for the BBC can easily be done from the front page with no need to go to a second page. Just select your location on the map, zoom in or enter a zip code for a greater degree of accuracy.
The information presented here is the weather, your local news and other information and perhaps snippets from your local BBC page.
"Reserved for the BBC"
The light blue colored area to the left of the 'BBC Local' area is reserved to whatever content the BBC website team deems important to push on to the front page. It's ever changing.
"Less is more – What do you mean that's it?!"
At the common 1024x768 resolution you won't see past this point without scrolling down. Let's take another look;
You got your interactive compact menu area full of nicely presented information and media, you then look to the right and see today's major news and events. Below it is the area dedicated to your local area, and to the left is other BBC content. The eye is drawn clock wise, it feels very natural.
Also, there's no need to actually signup or login, at worst you'll have to reselect your local area, an operation that takes mere seconds.
Whatever content that your looking for that's not directly listed you get to via the directory at the bottom of the page, one short scroll of a mouse away.
There you have it folks.
"Wait, what about all the Web 2.0 stuff, what's that gray area over there?'"
You guessed correctly, the dark area between the directory and the BBC Local is an area for the user, full of web 2.0 goodies. For this you need to signup and have a browser that supports cookies.
Notice that near the top left of the page it says "hello, John Cleese". (if you're logged out, it says 'register' instead naturally) To get to your preferences you simply click on your name.
From here you can set your locale, and create RSS feeds.
You could also add various widgets like boxen to the dark area I mentioned. (ala, personalized Google, or Apple's dashboard, konfabulator, 'etc)
Any page on the BBC website when you are logged in will have an 'add to my interests' link in a prominent place. From your profile you have a page that lists them all and where applicable has an 'add widgets' option.
For example, consider the following scenario: you registered to the BBC, you are now logged in. You scrolled down to the directory and selected 'Business and Money', on one of the pages in that category you clicked on the 'add to my interests' button and continued reading, uninterrupted. Later, at your leisure you click on your profile and see 'Business and Money' in your interests list. Next to it you click 'see available widgets' – for example a stocks widget, 'etc. You then add it and it appears on the BBC homepage in the dark area, and on a 'my widgets' list in your profile.
Widgets are customizable and draggable. Also just clicking on that 'add to my interests' lets the BBC have more data about you to analyze and better cater content to your liking.
Since there is such a wealth of content and large number of categories the number of widgets can be almost unlimited. It would be smart for the BBC to consider creating the first hundred or so and later releasing an API for the public.
Next, there is the whole social interaction scene. Where the BBC matches you up with people from your locale or with similar interests, 'etc. You can allow others to follow your reading activity (just friends, or everybody), messaging, 'etc.
Also a system similar to Digg.com where you read a story on BBC and vote for it, making it go higher in the story list and more likely to appear in other peoples 'to read' lists in their widgets. (while also having such statistics is quite useful for the BBC staff to have as well, for them to better editorialize content for none registered or none widget using users which are probably the majority still)
Finally, an online bookmark system similar to del.icio.us is quite useful. With your one BBC login you can take your bookmarks and other information with you. Separate it for internal BBC content and external content for easier navigation.
Also, the search results page should be revamped to include other related sources such as wikipedia and IMDB and other news sources for example.
Technical Details
I mentioned a 1024x768 resolutions before, while it is quite common nowadays, 800x600 still needs to be supported.
In such a case, instead of a two column layout the page will shrink to a one column layout. (see: www.alistapart.com – it's quite doable)
The colors I selected are the reds from the news section and the very same light blue color the BBC currently uses. I opted for a darkish background for various reasons, it seems to me to be more aesthetic and readable. The boxification (word that I just made up) serves a purpose, it's a natural guide for the eye. Instead of the mess the current page is, my version makes it very easy to focus on whatever you want to look at.
I also went for a simple gradient at the very top of the page based on the original gray currently in use.
These are all just suggestions, the purpose of this all was to get my ideas and the feel across. If for various reasons (such as usability, however I'd disagree that darker colors impair usability) the theme must be kept light, a white background still works. I strongly urge for a darker background to be at least an option in the user preferences.
Nothing you see on the page requires anything more then some Ajax in various degrees of complexion and should be fine for just about all browsers visiting the BBC presently. I do however have a suggestion about the delivery of video: RealPlayer and WindowsPlayer are not viable or desirable options for everybody, why not take this redesign as an opportunity to switch to flash as your primary means of video delivery (you can still keep the other formats as options)? Flash 8 was designed for this very purpose and is quite suitable. (See: YouTube, Google Video)
