Journal.
First impressions of the beta BBC home page
The latest revision of the BBC home page is certainly more a gentle evolution than revolution, but has some interesting alterations along the way.
Looking at the site from an information architecture perspective, the first thing that struck me was the shift of Search from centre to the highly conventional top right of the page. If you saw Henny Swan’s piece, Where’s my Googlebox – adventures in search for silver surfers which I previously highlighted in my Favourite things from December ’09, you’ll have read Henny make the following observation:
‘All participants had a hard time distinguishing between the search field in the web page (positioned top-centre just below the browser address box), the browser address box and the browser search box. When asked to look up www.tesco.com most would write the URL in the BBC search field and hit search.’
This makes sense to me and has always felt a little awkward – something that looks great in concept, less so amidst browser chrome and a variety of input areas seeking your attention.
Secondly, a primary navigation has re-appeared. The BBC in its release notes for the new beta home page describes this as:
‘easier and faster access to the most popular sites across the BBC’
Of course, these very same links have been sat in their respective modules on this page and continue to do so. The BBC doesn’t explain its rationale for the home page alone, though it’s clear it is a first step in creating a persistent navigation across all BBC sites, but you have to assume that relying on section links within content modules wasn’t working particularly well. Again, this doesn’t feel like a surprise – that inability to ‘see’ across the available sections in a single view weakened the effectiveness of the home page as a route to key sections.
Interesting, largely common-sense changes and far from the last changes we’ll see from the BBC over the coming months.
Postscript: Since this post, the BBC has written a thorough breakdown of the recent changes to the home page:
Leave a comment
Andrew Massey
9 March, 10:04 PM #
The common, persistent navigation is a welcome addition, but the header’s not as pretty, is it? Maybe it’s just the lack of the superfluous clock (which I immediately thought was extraneous when the present site was beta’d), but I actually think it’s the crampedness of everything in it.
Last time I thought the logo was too big, but have grown to like it that size, but now they have reduced it (if I recall correctly they had loads of feedback that it was too big at last beta).
But the main thing is I just don’t like the new full width “lead” area. The fact they’ve had to employ a clumsy gradation-to-black smacks of the fact the layout doesn’t work – the old style is much better IMO, and just that slight hint of different colours gives a little respite from the new complete monotony of one tone.
In fact, now I come to look closer at the rest of the page, whilst it’s obviously very similar, the old style feels much more refined just through the crispness of the 3-dimensional shadow-and-highlight grooves which makes the pods’ individual contents hang together in a more aesthetically pleasing way.
So I guess I’m saying it’s only the main navigation and search box which I think is an improvement!
Andrew Travers
9 March, 10:11 PM #
I think you’re right Andy, and very nicely summarised too.
This really feels like a staging post revision, rather than ‘redesign’ – I think there’s much more to come, and a more radical re-think at that.
Dean Russell
11 March, 02:19 PM #
Andy and Andrew,
I agree it is in no way a redesign by any stretch of the imagination. I do think it feels much clearer and friendlier as an interface though.
The banner area is much tighter and unlike the original version the space for headlines/imagery doesn’t feel like it is getting in the way of the rest of the page.
The overall interface seems to be better integrated – whereas the previous version (especially looking at them side-by-side) pushed the right hand side columns down too far down the page.
I do like the return of the navigation, but wish the site would flow this throughout the site – or at least make a plan to. It seems bizarre that the news sections still have a now pretty old design there – makes the experience travelling from the home page pretty poor.
Overall I think its heading in the right direction but they need to sort out a few issues. In particular, once you get below the header the page does feel a little bit like a Yahoo! wannabe, whereas the previous version had more of a stamp of BBC about it.
Personally – I liked the clock too – which I felt from a branding perspective gave some personality and a relationship to the good old BBC. So whilst it does feel warmer I fear the site lacks some of the real BBC brand and has tried to go down the route of only getting it right from a usability perspective.
So overall a good try – and hopefully as Andrew T points out – there will be more to come…
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