Archives for September 2011

Many of you have expressed opinions on whether the clock - shown here on a monitor near James' desk - belongs on the homepage.

Last week we launched a BBC Online homepage for the first time since 2009 for over a year in beta mode for public use and feedback. I published a post on the day of launch to explain the rationale behind the changes. My colleague Phil Fearnley blogged on our About the BBC blog to explain the broader BBC strategic context.

Showcasing the breadth of BBC Online on one webpage is a huge challenge. The ambition with this redesign was to create a time- and location-aware experience which allows users to quickly find what they're looking for, whilst discovering something new. It's a big change but the response has been pleasing and we're delighted with the level of engagement we're getting.

Initial response

We've opened up various routes for audiences to tell us what they think. We created a simple 'how to' guide which provided an opportunity for feedback via an online survey, and my original blog post invited feedback via comments. Alongside this, beta users have commented on Twitter via the #bbchomepage hashtag. On Twitter we were able to track real-time responses on the day of launch: following the first tweet of the day from The Guardian's @joshhalliday, 'new BBC' trended third in the UK at 11:30AM and mentions were generally positive - unprecedented for a new product launch, especially given the scale of change.

Early press coverage helped spread word also - from the Financial Times' summary of the challenges facing homepages across industry and our response to PaidContent's prediction that 'swipability' would characterise many sites' development in the future. Econsultancy acknowledged that though change of this scale often unsettles, response seemed more positive than negative in general.

As users become more familiar with change initial responses give way to more detailed and specific feedback. We've received some really constructive comments via our survey option though commenting on the BBC Internet Blog has questioned some principles of the page. There are some common themes emerging which I summarise below.

Emerging themes

Location settings

The beta represents work in progress and location setting isn't yet enabled (the page currently defaults to London). Location functionality will be introduced soon. Once enabled, a user's location will determine the nation edition that they see, and the preference will be stored via cookies. If no location preference is expressed the page will resolve via geo-IP to the relevant nation edition, with the largest city set as default location.

Beyond the web and touch screen functionality

The new homepage beta is designed for the web so isn't optimised for touch interaction; anyone viewing the product on a tablet isn't yet seeing a version created for that screen. We know from user testing that users found the carousel format "intuitive", "just like flicking through a magazine". In time, we'll be optimising the product for mobile and tablet; the interaction model will obviously lend itself very well to touchscreen 'swiping' expected on these handheld devices.

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Strictly Come Dancing

Sir Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly are your hosts for a 2 night Strictly spectacular weekend. In Friday's live show Alex Jones, Anita Dobson, Audley Harrison, Dan Lobb, Lulu, Robbie Savage and Russell Grant will take to the floor with their professional partners to perform either a whimsical Waltz or a cheeky Cha Cha Cha. On Saturday night it's the turn of Chelsee Healey, Edwina Currie, Harry Judd, Holly Valance, Jason Donovan, Nancy Dell'Olio and Rory Bremner to perform live to the nation with their partners.

This week there are no phone votes and no-one will be leaving the competition, but our couples are under pressure to impress the judges who will still be scoring.

Brand new for 2011. Press the red button to hear exclusive commentary from ex Strictly Champion Karen Hardy and a very special celebrity. Commentating live in a fun and informative style they will give you the lowdown of what's good, what's bad and what's highly entertaining on the dancefloor. Plus they will have plenty of titbits of backstage gossip to share.

Available on all platforms

Fri 30th September, 9:00pm-10:00pm
Sat 1st October, 6:00pm-7:05pm

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Radio 1 DJ Greg James shows his love for the new homepage

Last year I took advantage of the BBC attachment scheme, where staff are released to do another job within the BBC, and went on attachment with the Radio 1 and 1Xtra Interactive team. As a developer, it was a fantastic opportunity to spend time with an amazing editorial team in one of the most vibrant corners of the BBC. I got to work on some amazing projects, such as the Live Lounge, a new mobile site and crazy things like hooking up a slot car racing set to Twitter.

During this time I got involved in a rather ambitious project: a new homepage for Radio 1 and 1Xtra. The editorial proposition laid out by Chris Johnson’s team focused on three priorities for the new homepages: the live experience, promotion and personalisation. Yasser has already described the design process, and in this blog post I’ll go under the hood to describe some of the technical aspects of achieving the vision.

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Schedule Wall for Barcamp MediaCityUK. Photo by Ian Forrester

1. Betas galore!

A beta of the new BBC home page was launched this week. This post by James Thornett is still open for your comments.

Josh Halliday produced a storify of initial reaction alongside his piece in Media Guardian. The Register's headline: "BBC Website ditches modules in facelift".

After the initial flurry in the twittersphere more considered opinions emerged including Gareth Klose's "On the Beta BBC home page":

The new one feels both busier, and simpler. Without the excessive and technically unreliable customisation it’s lost that horrible of air of “is it a homepage or a BBC specific My-Yahoo?"

Don't forget the other blog posts currently open for comment about BBC betas:

• An insight into the Radio 1 and 1Xtra Homepages UxD by Yasser Rashid.
• More detail on Radio 1 and 1Xtra Homepages from Chris Johnson.
• A Labs version of the BBC Radio Homepage by Chris Kimber.

2. BBC iPlayer and Accessibility Tools

In this week's edition of Radio 4's In Touch Daniel Danker (General Manager, Programmes and On Demand) was interviewed about BBC iPlayer and accessibilty tools This followed up the previous week's programme which featured feedback from blind users of BBC iPlayer.

3. BBC Journalism Portal

You may have missed this paper which gives details about how the new BBC Journalism portal works.

Maritta Eager, BBC World Service Head of Development, summed up how the portal helped journalists across the BBC to cover the June 16 Abuja bombings:

Before the Portal this would have involved multiple phone calls and emails. Here everyone could see that conversion instantly. Commissioning was done for everyone in one place without any phones or emails. The Abuja office weren't getting 20 calls. The bureau simply accessed the Portal online. Others outside the Africa community could go into the conversation in real time or after the fact.

Also see Kevin Bakhurst's talk: "How has social media changed the ways newsrooms work?"

4. IBC conference

Kevin was speaking at the IBC conference in Amsterdam where the BBC News app for Samsung TV won the "TV app of the Year" award.

Also attending was Daniel Danker who was interviewed by Videonet: "Tablets are bringing viewers back to the schedule at the BBC".

5. BBC Research and Development blog

There's been some interesting stuff on the R&D blog recently including:

Ian Forrester looks back to a "Wonderful Weekend at BarCamp Media City". There's a video too.

See also this story from the Guardian and "BarCamp? What's a BarCamp" from About The BBC blog.

Plus "Create Your Own BBCQR Code" by Duncan Robertson and "RadioTAG" by Sean O'Halpin

Have a nice weekend.

Nick Reynolds is Accountability Executive, BBC Online

"reflecting aerial", a BBC R&D prototype satellite dish, 1970

Alix wrote on August 26 about planned changes to how some BBC channels are digitally transmitted. A month later, some BBC channels are now moving between satellite transponders. Alix blogs now to let you know how the changes are going.

I thought you would appreciate an update on the progress we have been making on this change. There are two areas that I think will be of particular interest to you:

1. Further details of the technical changes
2. A summary of the communications we have been putting in place

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Last three BBC homepage designs, with the new beta

Come for the things you need, come back for things you discover

I’m James Thornett, Head of the BBC Homepage product, and I want to tell you a bit about the new homepage we’ve launched in beta mode for public use and feedback today. The beta is accessible from a promo at the top of the current homepage (or directly at beta.bbc.co.uk), and demonstrates a new ‘visual-first’ approach to showcasing the breadth of our content on the web.

The opportunity

My colleague Phil Fearnley has written about the re-launch from a strategy perspective over on the About the BBC blog, situating the BBC Homepageproduct within the context of a reshaped BBC Online.

As Phil suggests, a homepage by definition should bind all of the other products together and has an important editorial role to play.

But showcasing the breadth of BBC Online content within a single page has been our constant challenge. To date we’ve made tweaks to a relatively static page to better fulfil this purpose; with the move to a new technical platform, we’ve the opportunity to rebuild the page from the first principles to provide a more effective solution.

The BBC Homepage today

To the left of the picture you can see the evolution of the page over recent years, from 2005 to 2010. The first thing you’ll notice is that the page hasn’t changed very much in this time – column-based, modular, with an evident hierarchy of information reflecting the primacy of news and sport.

There have been few new features since January 2008 when we introduced customizable and movable widgets to enable users to determine page layout, and the ability to listen live to BBC radio directly from the homepage and to browse BBC TV schedules.

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1Xtra beta home page

I'm Yasser Rashid, Senior Creative Director responsible for the user experience and design team who work across Radio, Music, TV and iPlayer. Last week the new Radio 1 and 1Xtra homepages launched as beta, completely reinventing how we think, design and interact with a radio station online. What you see on the beta websites with a BBC iD right now is a dynamic, real time Radio 1 and 1Xtra:

• bbc.co.uk/radio1/beta
• bbc.co.uk/1xtra/beta

It's an interactive channel that enables the audience to see the output of both stations (by using the station switcher) including music, SMS, tweets, photo's, video and messages from the presenters themselves.

Although it's usually driven automatically by live feeds of data coming out of the studios, the editorial team are able to manipulate the live stream. When something interesting, e.g. the presenter chatting to a guest, the panel can switch to live video.

Why this new approach is exciting is that it lets you see all of Radio 1 and 1Xtra including the bits that don't fit into the audio broadcast. The internet is at the heart of how the Radio 1 and 1Xtra audience consume media. To make what we offer compelling, we've created a platform for the audience to interact with live radio both directly through the website itself and across the social media they use.

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Reel History

The Reel History of Britain retells the fascinating stories about how life in Britain used to be, through the film collections of the British Film Institute and other National and Regional Film Archives.

The BBC Two series will focus on a different aspect of British life, highlighting the hardships and simple pleasures, as well as the enormous social changes that took place from the 1900s onwards.

Press the Red Button to get more from Reel History. Each week we are showing in full some of the very best films from the BFI archive.

This week: Housing Problems

This film takes us back to the 1930s - a time of slum housing and great hardship for many of Britain's working classes. This groundbreaking social documentary pioneered the technique of using real people to tell their own story to the camera.

bbc.co.uk/reelhistory

Sky/Freesat:
Mon 19th September, 6:55pm-4:00am
Tue 20th September, 6:55pm-4:00am
Wed 21st September, 6:55pm-4:00am
Thu 22nd September, 6:55pm-4:00am
Fri 23rd September, 6:55pm-4:00am
Mon 26th September, 6:55pm-4:00am
Tue 27th September, 6:55pm-4:00am

Freeview:
Mon 19th September, 6:55pm-9:45pm
Tue 20th September, 6:55pm-7:45pm
Mon 26th September, 6:55pm-9:45pm
Tue 27th September, 6:55pm-7:45pm

Virgin Media:
Mon 19th September, 6:55pm-11:00pm
Tue 20th September, 12:45am-4:00am, 6:55pm-4:00am
Wed 21st September, 6:55pm-4:00am
Thu 22nd September, 6:55pm-4:00am
Fri 23rd September, 6:55pm-4:00am
Mon 26th September, 6:55pm-4:00am
Tue 27th September, 6:55pm-4:00am

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Examples of BBC web accessibility tools, from the MyDisplay home page

Back in 2005 a small group of BBC Designers, Developers and Accessibility Specialists began to investigate the benefits of in-page customisation.

The main output of their discussion was the realisation that with the right templating system and standards in place, the visual experience of a BBC webpage could be altered to make it more accessible to users with moderate vision impairments and people with cognitive disorders such as visual dyslexia.

This significant project has changed hands and names over the years; Cornerstone, ATK and ending up with the title MyDisplay, but the aim remained consistent, to know more about how BBC digital content could be made more accessible to these significant and often overlooked groups.

Today sees the closure of the latest user trial of MyDisplay and as a result we enter the usual period of analysis and reflection on the history, objectives, insights and outcomes.

MyDisplay was a customisation engine, the third such server side engine built by the BBC. Each advanced our understanding of the breadth of the variables and the issues, shortcomings as well as possibilities.

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Radio 1 home page beta

About a year and a half ago I was sat at my desk writing a very ambitious proposal to re-invent Radio 1 online. 

Radio 1 has had a website for over 15 years and it has always done us proud. But recently we've been struggling to keep up with the radio station. With the internet at the centre of young people's media consumption it was critically important for our website to not only be a portal for experiencing the best bits, but to act as a platform to visualise and interact with live radio, and a place that can stimulate and reflect reaction from social media spaces.

Somehow I managed to convince people that this was possible and after months of research, wire-framing, design, prototyping, coding, testing and publishing, I'm excited and delighted that we can now share it with you.

Today we've launched new homepages for Radio 1 and 1Xtra that aim to re-invent what the website is for and how you use it. There is no longer a radio station and a website, they are one and the same.

You can try out the new homepages here:

• bbc.co.uk/radio1/beta/
• bbc.co.uk/1xtra/beta/

For now, you’ll need to get a BBC iD to access them.

When designing and building the new homepages we followed three key principles: They need to be as live as radio, content should be immediately and easily accessible and they should cater to your personal tastes.

Live

From now on both Radio 1 and 1Xtra will have a live feed that let’s us visualise what's happening on-air, as it happens. If we're playing a track, you'll see what we're playing; if we've just taken a photo of a guest, you can see them immediately; and if the cameras are on you can watch a live video stream of the studio right there in the page.

You can now send a message to the studio for free (once you've signed in) so you can join in with features and games on each show. Or if you're using SMS, Facebook or Twitter you can get in touch that way too and we'll feature our favourite messages, comments or tweets in our feed.

Immediate

Everything you see on the page is clickable. So if you're interested in a track we're playing, you can click on it to listen to a sample and find out more info about the artist.

Also, if you want to see a video we're talking about on-air, you can click and watch it straight away. We've even improved the search so it’s much easier to find specific things. Just begin typing what you're looking for and a number of options appear.

Personal

Radio 1 and 1Xtra can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. You may like some programmes but not others, you may only be into certain music genres or you may just want to get access to the latest celebs. The new homepages give you the ability to tell Radio 1 what you love. Whether it’s a particular track, or even a photo or video, if you tell us you love it we’ll suggest some more things you might like back. You may discover things you’ve never seen before, interviews or mixes you’ve never listened to or artists you’ve never heard of.

Also, we’ve made it much easier for you to keep track of your favourite DJs with the ability to build a list of the DJs you like and to have links to their pages all in one place.

So that’s a quick tour of the main features but there’s plenty more to play with. If you haven’t had a go yet then now would be a good time, or if your interested in reading more background, read on.

Background

Without doubt this has been the most rewarding project I’ve been involved with at the BBC, but it’s also been one of the toughest. 

Given the breadth of what Radio 1 and 1Xtra offer and the vibrant personality of both stations it was always going to be a challenge to meet their every demand, but there were other factors to consider too. 

We had to satisfy BBC design guidelines, meet rigorous technical standards and the pages had to scale to large audiences. Luckily we had a great team who were cared deeply about getting every detail right. 

Design-wise the homepages are unique and beautiful, they allow the brilliant images that come out of Radio 1 and 1Xtra every day to do the talking. They’re really simple and fun to use, making discovering more about the stations a real pleasure. Yasser Rashid, Tom Spalding and the rest of the UX team have done a magnificent job in bringing together a number of new concepts in a elegant and exciting way.

Yasser will provide more detail on how the design process worked very soon.

Tech-wise we’ve really pushed some boundaries too. 

The site is built with the next generation of web-browsers in mind (though we're pleased to say it works on older ones too) and it feels much more like an app than a website.There's a huge amount of data to explore, every programme, video or audio clip we make and thousands of tracks are all at your fingertips.

This is not only a testament amount of effort we've put into our technical infrastructure over the years, but to the engineers at Kite (the company who won the commission to build the homepages). The implementation meets every aspect of the ambitious design and the unique combination of Javascript and push technology make live updates to the homepage feel like magic.

Behind the scenes at Radio 1 HQ we've been making a number of changes to the way we work in order to ensure the live experience is as good as it can be.

Over the past year you’ve seen us evolve our webcams from a simple handheld camera to a fully vision-mixed multi-camera offering. We’ve also been optimising the play-out systems so we can tell you what track we’re playing, more often.

But this is just the beginning and as time goes on we hope to evolve and improve what we provide in the live feed for each show.

I don’t expect the new site to be 100% perfect, but I do believe the ideas, principles and technologies it uses will be crucial to the future of Radio 1 as it continues to grow in the online world.

Please send us your thoughts and feedback at bbc.co.uk/radio1/help/homepage/feedback/. The website will be available as a beta trial for the next few weeks.

Chris Johnson is a Senior Producer for Radio 1/1Xtra Interactive

Website re-launches, however well-intentioned and sensible, sure can annoy people. It is like when your supermarket moves all their aisles around: nothing is where you expect it to be and everything takes more time.

For children's websites this is especially true: children are just learning how to use computers, and when the sands shift they can no longer find what they want. Usage of your site can go down, and audience appreciation - a metric essentially based on asking people if they like the site or not - tends to tank, at least in the short term.

So a few months ago I blogged about how we were trying to address this by using a 'no-more-tears' approach to re-launching CBBC. Instead of a big bang, we started by keeping the design as it was and releasing major functionality improvements piece by piece; when children were used to moving their mouse in certain ways to get certain things, we unrolled a new design on top.

Did that actually work?

Well, that all seemed very clever - and those of you who are feeling so inclined would be very welcome to vote for CBBC as the relaunch of the year in .Net magazine's awards in fact. However, since then we have been monitoring our statistics to see if it Actually Worked, and if we should repeat this approach for CBeebies; a hugely loved site and one with an audience at an even earlier stage of using computers.

On balance, we concluded that the answer is yes. While we were releasing the new functionality on CBBC, the audience appreciation actually went up. When we unrolled the new design on 11 April, as expected we got a number of comments, not all of which were positive. However, most people preferred the new design, and there was even a clear majority saying that the new site was easy to use post-relaunch. Meanwhile in a vote on Wired magazine's kind review of the new CBBC site 65% said that they thought the new site was better than the old, while, a further 24% even claimed that they their children hadn't noticed the change.

Therefore, today we put the CBeebies website through the first stage of a no-more-tears relaunch, taking it from this:

To - and come with me here - this:

Ta da! Come on!

Has anything actually changed here?

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Radio 2 Live in Hyde Park

Watch highlights from Radio 2's Live in Hyde Park concert.

Featuring hits from Gary Barlow, Imelda May, Bellowhead, The Pierces, James Blunt, Jonathan Jeremiah, Lenny Kravitz and Chic.

The concert takes place on Sunday 11 Sept. You can press red to watch highlights from 6am Monday 12 Sept.

bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00jzs4h

Sky/Freesat:
Mon 12th September, all day
Tue 13th September, 6:00am-7:00pm
Tue 13th September, 10:30pm-6:00am
Wed 14th September, all day
Thu 15th September, all day
Fri 16th September, all day
Sat 17th September, all day
Sun 18th September, all day

Freeview:
Mon 12th September, 6:00am-6:45pm
Mon 12th September, 8:00pm-9:45pm
Tue 13th September, 4:10am-6:45pm
Tue 13th September, 10:30pm-5:50am
Thu 15th September, 8:00pm-5:50am
Sat 17th September, 9:00pm-6:00am
Sun 18th September, 6:00am-9:40am
Sun 18th September, 9:00pm-2:10am

Virgin Media:
Mon 12th September, 6:00am-10:25pm
Tue 13th September, 4:30am-6:25pm
Tue 13th September, 10:30pm-6:00am
Wed 14th September, 6:00am-9:25pm
Thu 15th September, all day
Fri 16th September, all day
Sat 17th September, all day
Sun 18th September, all day

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LG's Dual Play in action

I'm a Senior Technologist working in the BBC Blue Room. As part of the Technology Division the Blue Room is the corporation's consumer technology demonstration area, where we highlight how the fast paced world of consumer electronics is affecting how BBC content is consumed now and possibly in the future.

An important date in the Blue Room diary is Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin.

IFA is the largest consumer electronics show in Europe, where manufacturers show off their products and services and a chance for us to get a first look at products that might be affecting the BBC now and in years to come.

3D was all the buzz at IFA last year. Would consumers want to wear a pair of specs to watch Nadal at Wimbledon serve a double ace in the third dimension?

A year later and there appears no let up in the manufactures appetite for 3D. As stereoscopic capable TVs are becoming a familiar sight on the high street, it was a no-glasses 3D TV from Toshiba that got the crowds queuing. With headtracking technology the screen is designed to deliver autostereoscopy to up to nine viewers, and will be the first commercially available 3D TV of its kind.

An interesting twist using 3D display technology is LG's Dual Play (see picture above). This allows two gamers to each see their own fullscreen 2D view on the same screen by wearing a special pair of polarised glasses. The key difference being that player one's glasses house two left eye lenses, while the second player's have two right eye lenses. The first screen to come bundled with the special specs will be the LW980T. However, our tests suggest that DIY pairs can be made by swapping the lenses in regular passive pairs and used in conjunction with a polarising 3D TV and a spilt-screen two player game.

There were big launches in the tablet computing category. Sony are one of the last to enter the market with two devices and three screens, their Tablet-S and dual screen Tablet-P grabbed headlines. Of interest to me was how the tablets were being positioned and the functionality being demonstrated. Sony's tablet was dotted all around their large exhibition area, next to the home audio products and in-front of the televisions, not hived off in an area of their own. LG, Philips, Samsung and Panasonic too, were keen to show tablets and smartphones sharing and interoperating with their TVs.

The 'smart' phone has been with us for sometime and it's a name that consumers connect with. The electronics firms recognise this and, as Roland noted at CES earlier in the year, some were starting to call their new internet connected televisions and TV services 'smart'. Eight months on and the term has been adopted across TV brands. However, it appears that the marketing teams want to expand 'smart' beyond TVs and phones to domestic appliances, the connected home and even to communities. We saw use of 'smart iron', 'smart life', 'smart eco' and 'smart town' at the show.

Haier's transparent Organic TV

The giants of the consumer electronics industry invest huge sums on innovation - Samsung's annual spend on research and development exceeds £5 billion.

Haier Electronics, better known for producing white goods, caught much attention by showing off some their latest TV prototypes and technologies. Organic light-emitting diode TVs have been seen before at IFA, but Haier have developed a 22-inch transparent OLED 'Organic TV'.

Also of interest is their mind reading headset that converts human brainwaves into digital signals to control a TV. As an early prototype this technology is still a long away from replacing the traditional infra-red remote. But could it be that tomorrow's television viewers will have to think before they switch channels?

Richard Robbins is Senior Technologist, BBC Blue Room, BBC Technology

Follow the BBC Blue Room on twitter for updates and more pictures.

BBC Click has a video report: "IFA showcases the latest tablet technology".

Occasionally the BBC publishes technology related blogs to explain the direction and ambition of our technology, or simply to share ideas and explore our current thinking.

Spencer Piggott published the BBC's Technology Strategy paper on the BBC Internet blog, and earlier this year wrote an updated blog on the associated roadmaps which are underpinning our technology decision making. Understanding how technology helps us deliver our audience goals leads to more fruitful conversations across the broadcast industry as a whole, and helps focus the relationships with our partners and nurtures greater understanding amongst technology suppliers.

Attached to this blog is a White Paper (PDF) which seeks to achieve similar outcomes. It explains the development of the BBC Journalism Portal and explores how the BBC, along with other news broadcasters and technology suppliers is looking to exploit current technology solutions. It complements and builds on a number of the themes set out in the BBC Technology Strategy paper thereby, we hope, stimulating and focussing debate in a very practical way around a specific topic - the development and shape of newsroom production tools in the future.

Many recent news stories, such as the riots in England and the "Arab Spring" have emphasised the centrality of social media both in terms of the networking and co-ordination capability they provide, but also in the eyewitness reporting opportunities they offer, providing a new connection and immediacy with a story previously not possible. It is exactly these capabilities and collaboration opportunities that BBC News has sought to harness for its journalists by the development of the Journalism Portal - a web based system built on top of industry standard collaboration software to create one portal for the journalism community within the BBC.

Furthermore, the BBC's Journalism Portal seeks to take the first steps in supporting the growing demands of multi platform and multimedia production, through the concept of story based production. In essence the Portal strives to be the "mash up" point for information and data around which journalists can come together across the BBC as a single community irrespective of their location. Using the portal to share information and the best content on stories or for planning purposes is leading to more effective ways of working and importantly is adding speed and depth to our journalism.

I hope you find the White Paper/case study stimulating.

Peter Coles is Technology Controller, Journalism

View the Journalism Portal White Paper as a PDF here.

This BBC Radio homepage is now live. You may find Chris Kimber's blog post about your feedback on this Labs version, and the live launch of interest - update Ian McDonald, 2 Nov 2011

A screenshot of the Radio 1 Labs release

Today marks an important (if relatively modest) step for BBC radio on digital platforms, as we release a Labs version of the new BBC Radio homepage.

I'm an Executive Product Manager in BBC Future Media working on what will eventually (sometime during 2012) become the Radio and Music product, in line with the BBC's strategy for a small number of cross platform products, as outlined by Director of FM Ralph Rivera and previous Director Erik Huggers.

Today is the very first step on the ladder, as we have spent recent months building the foundations and are now keen to start to get feedback from users on this release of the Radio homepage.

Working with a multi-disciplinary team I am responsible for steering the direction of the product. We do this based on usage of our current radio and music sites, such as Radio 1 and Radio 4, and the extensive research we have carried out with radio listeners, mixed with some strongly held views from technical and editorial teams about the potential user experiences for our content and brands in the digital space.

Our first release is very much a Labs release, which means it's not completely ready to replace the current Radio homepage.

There are many features we'd like to introduce which are on our backlog, but instead of waiting another month or so we are keen to allow you to preview and feedback on the work, allowing us to catch any major issues before it goes fully live, and add some of your feature requests to our backlog.

The Radio homepage serves multiple purposes: for some it's a quick navigational page to get to a radio station's website. For others it's the destination itself, allowing you to find out what's on right now, and listen live to any BBC station via the Radioplayer pop-out console. Our Labs release makes both of those journeys easier, but also presents each stations' most recent and most popular on-demand programmes and clipped highlights (where available). For example, Radio 1, 5 live and Radio Scotland.

It also allows you to move very quickly and easily between this radio station overview via a new toolbar at the top of the page, which mirrors real life behaviour of radio listeners most of whom listen to more than one BBC station. This extends the concept of a "station tab" which exists on the current BBC Radio page and, importantly, does not replace the existing network homepages which are prominently linked.

We are still experimenting with various new ways of presenting all this information and content, and for now, we'd love you to have a play with the new Labs radio homepage and click the feedback link to tell us what you think.

Chris Kimber is Executive Product Manager Radio and Music, BBC Future Media

Current BBC London 2012 portal, bbc.co.uk/2012

At the Media Guardian Edinburgh International TV Festival I took part in a session about the BBC's plans for London 2012. BBC Director of 2012 Roger Mosey opened with an overview of our editorial ambitions for the Games, also announcing plans to capture key moments in Super Hi Vision and show these across three UK locations - reported here in The Guardian. I followed by presenting a 'sneak peek' of the BBC's online plans.

The BBC holds digital media rights for the Games, and more licence-fee payers than ever before are now connected: according to Ofcom 74% of people now have broadband; more than a quarter of adults (and half of all teens) own a smartphone; and one million internet-enabled TVs were sold during 2010. London 2012 provides an unparalleled opportunity to make the sporting and cultural celebration the most connected and inclusive yet.

This is also an opportunity to offer audiences unprecedented choice: last month we outlined our intention to deliver to audiences over 2,000 hours of live sport online via 24 High Definition streams - every sport, from every location on every day - but it's not just about choice of content. In line with our 'Delivering Quality First' strategy for BBC Online, we plan to make services available across four screens: computers, mobiles, tablets and connected TVs, or as Ralph Rivera has put it in the past "on whatever piece of glass you choose".

Key innovations

At Edinburgh, I talked about some of the innovations that we're experimenting with, with a view to including in the final BBC Olympics experience.

"Intelligent video"

To create a more active and immersive viewing experience when you're on the web. We plan to enrich video streams by providing context-sensitive data overlays. These overlays can then allow embedding of direct links to content. So if you're watching the fencing, for instance, you could click on the athlete's name in the data overlay on the video to jump straight to his profile page. And vice versa, through sophisticated tagging you could go direct from a leader board, into the video of a winning finish, for instance.

Dynamic curation

We're developing a new publishing platform that delivers pages that are dynamically and automatically created. Content can be tagged with an identifier that can be automatically pulled into the relevant page to provide a real-time, extensive, and trusted companion to events. We delivered a page for each country, squad and player during the World Cup in 2010 using this model and we're scaling this up for next year to deliver unparalleled up to the minute detail on each athlete, country and event. Delivering such a detailed and broad service via traditional editorial curation would be cost prohibitive.

Visual-first navigation

Pulling all this together is a user-experience based on horizontal navigation, consistent across all devices. This highly-visual "stream" allows us to give greater prominence to video and encourage browsing beyond this, making the breadth of content more accessible. Already popular in smartphone and tablet design, this natural and intuitive way to browse content is just like flicking through a magazine. Filters too, would enable users to tailor content on the page, like opting for more video according to their preferences.

Location-based mobile experience

Mobile will be integral to the way many follow events and interact with others. We'll be leveraging the distinct benefits of devices to improve London 2012 for audiences.

With half of teens now owning a smartphone (and 60% considering themselves to be 'highly' addicted to them - especially for social media) the mobile experience is going to be important for them. We envisage a digital experience that's as seamlessly social on mobile as on the web - with geo-location used to identify activity near to where users are and tools to share with friends on the move.

In the living room

The Independent summarised our plans to bring the Games into the living room - connected TV is another area of focus.

Analysts are forecasting that around 36 million TVs with built-in internet capability will be in homes by the end of 2016, and forthcoming innovations from the likes of Google TV and platforms such as YouView will help increase the penetration of connected TV before the games.

Our BBC iPlayer product for connected TV is available on over 300 devices (most recently Sony PS3), and we recently launched a BBC News app for connected TV which we'll be rolling out across further devices this year. For the Olympics we're developing a similarly structured product, with a navigational panel allowing users to flick between the 24 live streams via their remote control, and access stories and updates in full from the internet on the living-room TV.

Beyond London 2012

These innovations don't start and end with London 2012. Many will find feet in the other products of BBC Online over time. And, we'll continue to explore ways to improve our four-screen offer - the development of broadcast technology is iterative and we're some way from realising the connected storytelling vision that Ralph Rivera has outlined in the past (where a highly social and seamless experience is enjoyed through all four screens) - but the Games provide an opportunity to take real steps in that direction.

Phil Fearnley is General Manager for News & Knowledge, BBC Future Media responsible for the delivery of the Digital Olympics.