Reboot bbc.co.uk

BBC.co.uk

Andrew

For my design, I have taken existing BBC site elements and put them together in a simple, clean and uncluttered way.

The key is simplicity of usage. As such, the page is all above the fold.

BBC.co.uk is a starting point, with search at its heart. With vast amounts of data, the user should define what they want to find.

BBC branding is important, and I wanted to maximise the use of the iconic and globally recognisable logo.

The news links and editorial box would be based on an algorithm combining viewing habits and user defined preferences.
The four text links would be the most frequented / or last 4 visited page sections within bbc.co.uk.

This way at least 7 items would be of direct interest to the user, rather than the scatter gun approach of pushing everything that it is on the site.

This creates a more user-defined experience.

My example page is what Emma from Blackburn might define:

- some local news in the news links, included as she clicks through to a lot of local stories
- also, tracking her viewing habits would have detected an interest in very specific topics, e.g. Cyprus, which is why the Cypriot MPs story would appear.
- and she herself set 'soaps' as one of her preferences, hence the latest episode of EastEnders is featured.
- the four links are automatically set as the section pages she visits the most, or has that she has set as 'BBC bookmarks'.

The page content would change according to the individual using it. So as another example, Peter from Guildford's page might include political news, finance, pension stories, and feature 'The Blue Planet' wildlife programme, or Radio 3 concerts.

In terms of the functionality, I wanted it to be eminently usable by the majority, rather than the uber-geek, so RSS, AJAX and Web 2.0 are not necessarily overly-prominent features on the page.

• 23 May 2006 12:19