Posted: Wednesday 21st September 2011
The BBC have released a new homepage design in beta testing today: http://beta.bbc.co.uk
The design seems to be optimised for tablet devices. Scrolling through to select a programme/video/news story looks very pretty on the iPad. The Most Popular, What’s on and Explore sections expand and contract which gives a feeling of movement that is most useful on a touchscreen device so you know the touch has effected something.
The BBC have produced an interesting blog post about the redesign too. It seems the customisation options on their current website aren’t being regularly used so they are taking the website down the route of filtering content rather than users customising of it. This approach could be something for us to consider in the University sector – our homepage could potentially contain lots of images/videos on courses, research, news etc then you could filter that down to be presented with more focussed information if that’s what you want.
It’s a clever way of dealing with a mixture of website visitors – some with very specific needs and others wanting a more general overview. What do you think of the new design?