College of Technology round up: Lean analytics, Nitro, Cloud and Storytime

Over the last few weeks we’ve published a variety of material on the College of Technology website with a software engineering theme.

Lean Analytics: making products better

How much can you glean from the amount of hits a webpage gets? According to data analyst Alistair Croll not very much at all. This is, he explains, an example of a vanity metric – a statistic that can be very appealing to focus on, but that doesn’t entirely help you improve your website or web product. In our new film Alistair describes the Lean Analytics cycle as a way of making meaningful decisions using data.

Instead of concentrating on a potentially ambiguous headline figure like page views, you seek out metrics that can help build a better picture of how users interact with your product. Do they scroll to the bottom of the page? Do they share the content with other people? Do they click through to other content on the site? You choose the one metric that most needs improving, you make a small change in your product and then you see whether there is an improvement in the data. The short film also features Cait O’Riordan from Shazam, as well as Adam Bailin, Amanda Dahl and Jessica Siegel from the BBC who explain how we’re currently taking a Lean approach to data.

A fast and easy way to access the entire BBC catalogue

Since making programmes and clips available online almost a decade ago, the BBC has published more than half a million clips and almost two million episodes to watch or listen to online. In this article Allan Donald, senior product manager, BBC Platform API team, outlines the systems that the BBC uses to store and index all of a programme’s associated information (like its title, genre, availability or whether it’s in HD or can be downloaded).

In particular he explains the new API called Nitro that allows clients to get access to this metadata. By comparing the now/next feeds for Nitro and the old system, Dynamite, you can clearly see the difference the new API makes. In fact many of the announcements made earlier this year – including the 30 day catch-up window and BBC Store – all depend on Nitro.

Cloud technology and the BBC

What do CBBC games and the BBC’s presidential election coverage have in common? They both rely on cloud technology – essentially the ability to use someone else’s computing resources across the Internet.

Over the last few years ‘the cloud’ has become a ubiquitous term, though the actual meaning of something being ‘in the cloud’ is not always made clear. This article, courtesy of Mark Ransby, technical architect for BBC Children’s, explains what exactly cloud computing is, why it’s important and what benefits it presents. He then goes over particular examples of how the BBC is currently using the cloud and raises the question of how it might revolutionise our approach in the future.

Making CBeebies Storytime

Finally, last week we put up the first in a series of two articles about the development process for CBeebies Storytime. Dan Hett, senior games developer, walks through the challenges and requirements faced by the team in constructing the interactive storybook app. Given the sheer variety of different aspects ratios and resolutions on mobile devices, how do you create an app that is optimised for all screens? And how do you build a game structure that allows indie developers to contribute new content? Keep an eye out for the second part of the article, in which Dan will explain how they animated a pop-up book that behaves realistically and how they made the Storytime app as accessible as possible.

Frederick Botham is a researcher at the BBC College of Technology