erikhuggers

Putting Quality First – BBC’s new product centred strategy

12 August, 2010 by Einar Thorsen Leave a Comment

Erik Huggers explaining BBC's new 'product' centred strategy:

It's a self-contained entity within BBC Online, which unites technology and editorial to meet a clearly defined audience need. Each product has a simple and concise proposition that's easily understood by the audience, is kept up to date, fits the overall strategy for BBC Online and has clear editorial leadership.

It's a strategic approach for the service as a whole – framed by what our audiences need from the web, rather than what we produce today for TV and radio – a change in culture for BBC Online.

Audiences will see products organised into five content areas (portfolios) supported by a common technical platform.

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BBC News website redesign – comments from editors and designers

15 July, 2010 by Einar Thorsen Leave a Comment

Steve Herrmann, editor of the BBC News website:

What’s new:
• a fresh, updated design, with more space for the main stories of the day
• better use of video and images
• clearer and more prominent labelling and signposting of key stories, whether you are on the front page or a story page
• a better indication of which are the most recent headlines
• easier ways to share stories with others, for those who wish to, on social media networks

As I also mentioned in my earlier post, some important things are staying just the same, for example:
• all the content is still there: the best of the BBC’s journalism in text, audio and video?
• the latest news headlines will be as quick and comprehensive as ever ?
• accuracy remains at the core of our editorial values?
• we’ve been careful to keep things simple and easy to use; you have told us how important this is

From: BBC News website redesign (2)

Paul Sissons, UX Team Lead, BBC Future Media & Technology:

Fundamental to the new GVL is bold, strong type and crisp, un-cluttered layouts. The gradients and textures of “Web 2.0” are gone, and everything is pared down to the minimum required for delivering news.

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With an incentive, users will scroll. If that proves a positive interaction, it’s something that could become habitual. So rather than design our indexes and front page with everything at the top of the page, we are encouraging scrolling by putting richer content within stories and towards the bottom.

….

Across the project, there was a concern that larger images, bolder headlines and more links could make pages overbearing. Having a column of white at the right-hand side of a story’s body was one of the design decisions made explicitly to counter this.

From: BBC News website redesign: telling the story

Erik Huggers, Director of BBC Future Media & Technology:

This has been a major engineering project for the Future Media and Technology Division and I believe it’s a great example of engineering and design working hand in glove with editorial – a way of working that I talked about at the Media Guardian Changing Media Summit earlier this year. To give an example we have improved the content management system, which will make it easier for journalists to upload their story and add video and pictures to it more quickly and gives them better control of the layout.

From: BBC News website redesign

Audio Interview: BBC’s Huggers And Rose On iPlayer, Canvas And More | paidContent:UK

26 May, 2010 by Einar Thorsen Leave a Comment

Robert Andrews interviews Huggers and Rose about iPlayer launch:

The highlights…

—Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) for iPlayer IM: “Windows Live Messenger is one of the most popular right now,” said ex Microsoft exec Huggers. “Let’s try it first with the biggest out there.”

—HTML5 vs Flash: BBC has a strategic relationship with Flash maker Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE), but: “I can guarantee you that, in the labs, there’s plenty of activity with HTML5.”

—Canvas still relevant:“Everyone is building (connected TV) as a closed, proprietary environment.” “It’s very different from Google (NSDQ: GOOG) TV, which will just search the web.” “We need to build the damn thing.”

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The evolution of BBC iPlayer

26 May, 2010 by Einar Thorsen Leave a Comment

Erik Huggers:

The BBC wasn’t the first mainstream media company to offer a video-on-demand service, but I do think we were the first to get it right. Some important early decisions contributed greatly to its appeal with audiences.

He then goes on to describe simplicity of access (i.e. streaming), quality of content, clarity of message, and platform neutrality as those important decisions.

Bringing the benefits of emerging technologies to the public is in the BBC’s DNA as its sixth public purpose, and the idea behind BBC iPlayer was to give audiences greater control over the programmes they enjoy, guarantee subscription-free access to BBC content in an on-demand world, and provide better value for the content they have already paid for.

Too often people forget that technological innovation is part of the BBC’s public service remit…

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