Reboot bbc.co.uk

My News, My BBC

Al Petfield

The way I approached this was to think about how I use the BBC home page. To be honest, I don't really use it that much. I have the news, sport and weather pages bookmarked and I go straight to those. I tend to use the home page as a site map. So what is it about the current home page that puts me off? Well, two things. Firstly, there's too much information. It's fair enough that a home page should have links to other content, but it would be nice if it was more than just a jumping off point to other destinations within the BBC site. Secondly, the information that I am interested in is too thin. There are news and sport headlines, but only two of each.

What I wanted to do with the home page is to make it a bit cleaner and to personalise the content to my needs. I wanted to not necessarily remove content, but at least tuck it away in easy to find areas. I wanted to make it easier to find video and audio content and to create a way of bookmarking and sharing the content on the BBC site.

Here are the main ideas:

1) My News

Allowing the user to choose the news that interests them. I've included four columns that the user can fill with content. By clicking the 'change' links the user can choose from the various BBC feeds that are available. But why stop with just BBC content? This could be extended so that the user can enter any third-party feed to be shown on the page, but for this demonstration I've just included a selection of other feeds. Rather than having horizontal bars of content (like the current home page has with the stacked News, Sport and TV) I went for vertical bars. This way, the main stories for each of the feeds is at the top - above the fold - and scrolling down shows the earlier/less important stories. The visual metaphor of most important higher up is one that most people are familiar with (for instance, the way Google results are arranged).

2) My BBC

The BBC site has a huge load of content - wouldn't it be good if you could keep a track of this content? Bookmark the news stories that interest you, keep a track of the TV shows and radio programmes you like, follow the latest activity on messageboard conversations you are taking part in. The 'My BBC' tab holds these links in one place. By clicking the » (right angled quote) symbol next to headlines in the feeds and in the TV and radio listings, you can add content to your own space. If you see a programme that interests you then you add it to your BBC which can tell you when the next episode is on, when a podcast or download is available and possibly suggest similar programmes. This could be extended by allowing users to share 'their BBC' with other users or perhaps you could see other users who have the same interests.

3) What's On?

Quite often I go to the BBC site looking to see what is on TV and radio that day. The current 'What's On' service shows you what's on TV or radio but only in 2.5 hour chunks and it separates TV and radio. I wanted to create a TV listings panel that allows the user to look across the whole of the BBC's output. If the user has bookmarked programmes that are on that day then these could be highlighted in the listings.

• 25 May 2006 15:20