14 December 2007
BBC Beta: Now With Less Self Respect!
Posted by Sunny Thaper under: web design .
Apparently BBC is joining the bandwagon and completely selling out. The new BBC site, currently in beta (so beta it hurts), is full of gigantic fonts, ajax-fied widgets, and an extreme lack of content. Really BBC, what were you thinking?
The Bad
Anytime I see the word “beta” I cringe a little. Not only do I feel like they are calling me a moron that can’t tell a dev site from a live site, but I also feel like they are saying “Hi, I’m cool!” I don’t know about you guys but if anyone comes up to me and says that, my first reaction is “no… no you aren’t.”
What the hell is this? Seriously, a major news provider is going to crunch possibly the biggest reason why people visit their site into this tiny box? That header and edit button area alone could have given me two more headlines! Now that I think about it, I really should have grouped this under “The Worst” section because this just shows a poor understanding of your audience, of design, and of common sense.
Could they have made this any bigger (so big that I had to include the thumbnail with a link to the full image)? Now I’m not dissing the design, but the application of this to a news site… come on. I feel as if I’m being fed “cool” like I actually asked for it. I’d almost much rather prefer BBC to strip all design and whatnot and keep their site text only… I go there for content, not for gigantic fluffy space taking graphics.
The Worst
What the hell is this? Why the hell is this on the site? Why would I possibly want to click on this? It’s not even one of those curiously quirky ads that you just have to click on… it’s nothing short of completely annoying. Not only does the inclusion of this make no sense to me, but WHY the headings? Like the ad wasn’t big and crazy enough?
Really? Really? I mean I get it, it’s a retro bring back of the old BBC clock they used to have… I feel as if this was a knife meant to stab me in the eyes. Do I really need a clock on my website?
Please…
The Cool
The one cool thing out of all of this is I can add BBC news feeds to Google Reader and never ever have to visit their homepage again.
8 Comments so far...
Jim Jeffers Says:
15 December 2007 at 2:01 am.
I think Mark Boulton would agree with you on many of these statements (http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/bbc_homepage_redesign/)
I think though that the majority of the backlash is consistent of pet-peeves towards an aesthetic rather than the bottom line. For instance, you may find the BETA tag annoying but I’m perfectly fine with it in this case as this is not a true in effect redesign. If I goto the BBC homepage it is not this page YET. I would be in 100% agreement with you however, if they replaced the default homepage with this one and kept the Beta tag but here I find it justifiable.
But again this pet peeve towards the beta tag and the overall silly web 2.0 quirks of the design are merely hitting a nerve on our own biases towards a given aesthetic and I don’t find it fair to criticize a web site design for use of cliches.
I do have many criticisms of my own though. First and foremost is the half-assed attempt at making the site more interactive and customizable. Your remark on the news content being stuffed into one box hits the mark. Put all of the content into a series of modules and let the user figure out how to sort it out. What a slap in the face to the user.
This is like the designer is basically telling the user to design the site themselves. A bold move maybe but here it’s just silly. I came to BBC to find the most relevant news quickly not to design my homepage. This is an example of recklessly giving the user too much control and I find it to be the poorest of all of their design decisions.
In contrast the MSNBC redesign does achieve what the BBC attempts to accomplish by granting the user less control. On MSNBC I get to use arrows to readjust the priority of the categories. But that’s it. How the system of priority works is predetermined by the design team. I can only rank the categories for the system. The BBC solution is whacky. Where the most important content should go is subjective to me, and not all of the content is of the same class. It’s a mixture of modules containing many different types of content and I’m left with the burden of figuring out where the important stuff should go, and sorting out the differences between their contents.
The second poorest design decision are those colored buttons underneath the splash image. I don’t know that I agree that the size is unjustifiable. If this is what the editors believe is the most important content on the page and they need to prioritize it this much then that’s fine. But I don’t know that and I’m not going to argue on that point.
What bothers me though is the fact that the entire design theme changes when you click one of the colored button-tabs underneath that splash image. This is giving the user way too much feedback. It gives the impression that the entire page has changed to some degree but alas nothing has changed. Only the color. This useless additional feedback to the user on a click is only counter-productive to the user.
Sunny Thaper Says:
15 December 2007 at 11:47 am.
Jimmy, you are right that I have issues with the “Web 2.0″ design aesthetic but I do feel that in this case cliche bashing is completely poignant. If a site that wasn’t designed with the web 2.0 aesthetic had beta on their site, I wouldn’t think twice about it. They are indeed making it known that the site isn’t live (which I still have a slight disregard for but enough to really care). But in BBCs case they are putting the tag on their to follow the trend, not to indicate to the user that the site is unfinished. The beta than becomes fluff and not useful information.
Your comparison between MSNBC and BBC however I completely agree with. When it comes down to it, you are designing for the user and the last thing a user needs is more work to get what they want from their browsing experience. Basically it just comes down to a simplicity issue, I guarantee that people that actually like the new design and like the features still won’t use it as much as BBC wants them to. Simplicity is what people want, they might not know it but that’s what they want. Think of why the iPod is more popular than other media devices. It really doesn’t do a lot of stuff, these other devices often have crazy amounts of features that seem cool to me but I still end up buying the iPod.
Thanks for taking the time and writing out a well thought out and complete response Jimmy!
Sunny Thaper Says:
15 December 2007 at 11:48 am.
April, I actually got it from someone else’s Twitter post… I think Cameron Moll’s? But that doesn’t make me think less of your twitter posts 
sk8dork Says:
16 December 2007 at 12:03 am.
i have no idea wtf cbeebies are, but jesus christ that little blob with the googlie eyes just draws me right in. easily the most effective advertising i’ve ever bared witness to. thank you for bringing it to my attention, sunny, because although i still have not gone to the bbc site to click on the ad i am sure that it is going to open up my world to endless happiness and joy. i cannot wait to go on the adventure of a lifetime with cbeebies! oh sunny thank you so much!
Sunny Thaper Says:
16 December 2007 at 3:08 am.
sk8dork, I aim to please! *insert corporate smile and star flying from left to right above my head leaving a sparkly trail here…*
Martin Kulakowski Says:
28 March 2008 at 12:54 am.
Possibly the funniest f’in thing I’ve read this month! A++ Sunny.
Sunny Thaper Says:
2 April 2008 at 1:53 am.
Ugh, since the new blog design, this post totally got ruined image wise… maybe one day I’ll fix it.