Keep It Simple - KIS(S) my BBC
What I think about the BBC -
Mass education, free services, quality content, raising the broadcasting standards bar and keeping it high.
To be comtemporary and relevant to the digital podcast age. To offer special, value added, easy to use far reaching service to young and old without giving ammunition to its critics nor its commercial rivals.
The BBC is about maintaining the highest quality and independence, the World Service, UK on a global stage as the best and most trustyworthy source of news.
--------------------------------------
SO...
To that end I wanted to keep the design clean, fresh and simple. A distillation of what the BBC is best at with links to take you to the specialist content areas.
--------------------------------------
DESIGN -
The current page has so many of the same links repeated and it looks cluttered.
1) I wanted to keep the existing 'toolbar' as it is the only common thread across the whole BBC site - there's no need to duplicate it on the page. It also contains a great search tool. If I want to search the web I'll use my favourite engines.
2) Some 'Personalisation' is great especially to bookmark my favourite pages, local weather / news and podcasts. I don't want it to check my email (that would be too 'Big Brother').
--------------------------------------
CONTENT
I do want to see -
Live media/ last 7 days accessible / future trailers Podcasts RSS feeds Desktop & email features Broadband The BBC also has a HUGE ARCHIVE of information - I know the best way to find this stuff is via the search engine BUT as a lot of it is not yet indexed I wasn't sure how to present this material. There MUST be a way to access this incredible resource!! an XML dictionary..?
I didn't want to include -
'News edit features' - I respect the integrity of the BBC so I don't want anybody changing it. By all means include a comments link but I rarely read them. If there is an interesting, INFORMED opinion then it will usually end up with the article anyway.
----------------------------------
MORE ABOUT THIS DESIGN -
I like the idea of the single News/Sport/Headlines box with the ability to tab between items.
The media player on the front page that links to the front page content is also great - view footage/watch trailer/listen to samples etc.. all the important stuff on one page.
My faults - As a newbie to web design I realise that some elements of my design implementation could be improved on.. especially with the Back/Next arrows and the media player controls/presentation. If I was more skilled with flash then no doubt this would all look a lot more slick.
Finally -
This has taught me a lot about design and I have really enjoyed viewing everybody elses entries and comments. Despite all the criticisms about the BBC getting a new design on the cheap, I think it is a brilliant idea!! Looking at this project has also alerted me to a host of features on the BBC that I didn't even know existed!
- 24 May 2006 17:32
gallery
comments post a comment
Hello
This is a pretty clean design, and I like the right-hand bar.
I'm not sure about the next/back buttons for the news, I think it might be better for things like TV choices or now and next stuff, probably.
Some of the text runs over the edge of the boxes on my display, but that's because I have a stupidly big font size. It's not a big problem (or really a problem at all) but just to remind the bbc people that there are people who set their fonts really big. Even on the current front page, the text on the main image falls off the bottom of the image (though you can still read it easily so that's ok).
Finally, I can see the whole of the webpage's width on my really narrow browser window (yes, I AM a web designer's worst nightmare ;-) Top marks for that!