BBC BETA

Last week the BBC announced the testing of the new BBC beta homepage. This weekend I had a chance to sit down and play around with it and all in all I think it’s a step in the right direction. I’m interested with two different hats on really, one as a licence paying user of everyday BBC content and two, as designer who saw the rumblings of these ideas in March during Innovation Labs.

So, with my licence payers hat on I’m really only asking one question. Does the beta page serve my needs better than the existing BBC homepage? On a day to day basis i’m using the BBC news pages to check the headlines every now and then, as well as a daily browse of the sport and technology pages when I have 5 mins to spare. The basic premise with this new homepage is for users to create their own customised home page that pulls in the data their interested in therefore providing a ‘one stop shop’ through which you can navigate through to stories of interest. All in all the beta does a great job of not only replacing an link heavy homepage (see below), but also giving me the customisation options that mean I no longer have to navigate to three or four separate areas of the site to find what I’m looking for.

…versus…

As you can see, the beta site is a marked improvement on the existing homepage and from a usability point of view is taking some very positive steps towards offering BBC users the kind of front end to match the quality of content that the site delivers.

So now on goes the designer cap. Again, i’d say the beeb has scored highly on this front too. Despite adopting a lot of the web 2.0 cliches that a lot of designers hate (not saying i’m one of them) the site looks generally clean and the gradients do a much better job of dividing the sections than the pale blue wash on the existing site. I think the development team have used any ’2.0 ness’ sparingly enough so as not to detract from the genuine functional improvements that the site has made. The ajax and PHP elements will be a welcome addition to any developers (like us) as it’s the first time that the BBC has really embraced these standards that have appeared on a lot of sites over the last couple of years. I’m hoping this could be a signpost that will make it a whole lot easier for companies the BBC works with to start using these types of code on a regular basis.

The new style ‘widgetization’ and nice drag and drop panels has clearly been influenced by the growing popularity of start pages like netvibes and pageflakes. Unlike some other more progressed systems the BBC page doesn’t offer the level of customisation and functionality that these sites provide, however I don’t feel that the BBC needs to be competing with these pages on a like for like basis – this site is about making more of the BBC content, and not about tying users in to a page that becomes a portal for every element of their online communications.

So finally, any improvements? Well, taking on board the fact that the core changes at this stage center around the ‘look and feel’ more than the functionality i’d expect to see more customisation and filtering options added over the coming months. It’d be nice for users to filter content by keywords, aggregating RSS feeds in the same way that Yahoo Pipes works. Also, i’m not completely sold on the ‘one click changes all colours’ system that the top banner adopts. Although it’s nice to be able to make these changes through CSS, it’s not wholly appropriate when it gives the impression that the content has changed (when all that’s really been effected is the colours).

All in it’s two big thumbs up in my opinion. I’m looking forward to seeing the development of this over the next couple of months and will add our collective thoughts on any significant updates here. Oh, and just incase you didn’t notice, take a minute to appreciate the wicked retro-cool clock in the top right – please BBC, whatever you do, don’t get rid of it!