It has been a long time since the ‘glass-wall‘ redesign of the BBC homepage. We have tweaked it here and there in the interim but it was definitely looking tired.
Last week we opened up the new version to the public, hopefully to replace the existing homepage shortly: http://www.bbc.co.uk/home/beta/
I won’t go into the overall concept as Richard has covered most of it at rxdxt. The clock was an interesting concept for an IA as it was quite consciously and overtly not meant to be useful. We know you all have the time on screen already. It is just there to make you feel warm and fuzzy.
From a navigation point of view we’ve quite consciously stopped trying to be all things to all people. The old homepage was laden with links and many of them heavily under-used, a consequence of a remit to promote the depth and breadth of the site. The new version is more focused around regular tasks (and even more so if you customise it) and promotions.
Given the volume of traffic this page receives, it has been an interesting journey to sell the concept that the depth and breadth are best promoted in other ways but one that has been mostly successful. Over the next year I’m hoping to see a much greater focus on contextual navigation, recommendations and search as ways of surfacing the content.
We’ve still got work to do on that directory but that comes later…
Richard | 18-Dec-07 at 5:42 am | Permalink
The new design is looking good, always big news when the BBC go ‘up a notch’ with the screen resolution (browser window). I do wonder how many will choose to customise.
Hope you publish about your work on the directory via the blog.
Re. learning IA. We have just dropped our BSc in IA as few (if any) UK 18 year olds know the phrase. We’ve re-launched it as a BSc in Web Development, which from a Library School (in old money) is actually all about IA. We’re also launching an MSc Informatics for practitioners in areas such as IA who want gain a PG qualification in this field, with space for reflection on their practices. Finally we are also about to start a large European project which will hopefully lead to a (fully online) qualification in accessible web design.