Reboot bbc.co.uk

I don't want a portal, I want an information workspace.

ukavu

I believe an effective news site provides easy access to information, and even easier access to information I care about. Many current news sites are plagued with information overload where every page is a chaotic zoo of largely useless information.

The principles of this design are:
1. Personalize information to the user.
2. Provide a workspace to consume and find information.
3. Mix it up: information from dynamic sources and feeds are seamlessly integrated into the experience.

Using the prototype:
This is a working prototype with live content. The interface is organized into two columns: categories and content. The categories column can be changed by using the tabs on the top of the page. Selecting an item in the categories column will place a new frame in the contents column.

Technology in this prototype:
The site is mostly driven by custom server-side software to consume and aggregate RSS feeds, parse external html files for content and media, and integrate with dynamic data providers. Most of these operations are done in realtime as the user requests information. Ajax techniques were used to deliver this content to the browser without having to reload or navigate off page.

Category tabs:
These tabs generally represent an organization of information. The contents of these categories can contain a variety of information from news articles to sports scores to weather. The News and Sports categories happen to draw their data directly from the BBC RSS feeds.

The "My BB" category tab:
The motivation behind this category is to only show things the user is interested in. Currently this category will aggregate the content from all categories and only showing items that pass a filter specified by the user. This filter is currently hard coded to show an assortment of news and sports in addition to a mock up weather item. If this site were to be developed further, I would like to see "smarter” logic behind what this category contains.

I hope the rest is self explanatory. Enjoy, and thanks!

• 25 May 2006 12:59