6Music Homepage 2011

I was the design lead on this project. I worked with interactive producer Daniel Bean. We worked up the initial concept. Producing various low and hi fidelity wireframes before the indie was engaged. This meant that the scope of the project was as clear a possible from the start.

Some of the features of the redesign included the automatic refreshing of the carousel to display the live DJ image and that DJ's latest tracks. Another feature was the smooth transitions and animations within the carousel they add a polished finish to the end result. www.bbc.co.uk/6music. The in house team and Kent Lyons did a great  job using the feeds and data mechanisms available in a 'real time' way so the page is constantly up to date, new and fresh.

The page was was tested rigorously on different browsers as it needed to work smoothly on all browsers from IE6 to Google chrome.

Low-resolution concept wireframe

High fidelity wireframe














 

The final treatment

Desert Island Discs 2011

Desert island discs is a much-loved and long running Radio 4 show (since 1942). 

The old website wasn't doing justice to this very popular and much revered radio show. So a complete redesign was embarked upon. Digital design consultancy Fallon were commissioned to create a new brand identity kit (Classified) for Desert island discs. And digital agency Magnetic North were awarded the design and build contract.  

Early in the process, we was recognised there was a real opportunity to surface the large  breadth of content from the shows archive. 

A key challenge was finding an intuitive way to enable users to navigate through the 2850 shows available (approximate: it adds 1 every week) . The image on the left shows the browse and search mechanism. I was particularly pleased will the light grey indicator bars under the categories under "Explore Castaways". This gives an instant visual indication of the amount of content available per occupation, presenter or gender.

We worked though several prototypes, meetings and mock ups to get to the end result.We hope users enjoy delving into the archives to listen to the likes of George Clooney or Margaret Thatcher.

Right is a mock up of the top part of the homepage that didn't make it live. It was an attempt to integrate some the "listen live" box (top right) into the banner. Also an experiment with the "Radio 4" logo to align it horizontally

Key elements that did make it were the large image carousel instantly showing the latest shows and a highly prominent visual call to the users to search the archive.

My responsibilities on this project were..

• Signing off the designs 
• Identifying the key of functionality of each page template.
• Keeping the online offering true to the brand kit delivered by  Fallon to BBC Marketing.
• Assuring consistency in look and feel and functionality on  web and mobile. 
• Checking work against accessibility and BBC UX&D design standards and guidelines.

To the left is the final individual castaway template (if they have an image). The touches I like the most on this page are the large inviting image but most of all the circular images of the discs Alice Cooper had chosen.Visually the discs tie-in so well with the brand logo and the evokes thoughts of LPs and CDs in many people. Initially we wondered if we had a technical solution to make this possible for 2850 castaways X 8 songs. But we found an automated 'imagechef' solution that did the job.


One of the final pieces of work was the mobile site. Keeping visual treatment consistent  and offering the search and listen functionality were identified as 'must haves'. On the right is the final treatment for search page on mobile. As you can see visually it feels like the same offering as the site, with consistent colours, icons and branding.

On the mobile site we deliberately went for the most common format phone template rather than the higher end ipad/android layouts. We wanted a solution for all phone formats, so everyone can search andl listen.

If you don't know what Desert Island Discs is...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Island_Discs

Sounds of 2011

Originally a little site parked in a corner of the BBC News site. Rory Connolly (producer at BBC  /music) took up the cause. The "Sounds of" site is dedicated to highlighting new music acts who pundits think will be the next "big thing".

I was the design lead, this entailed discussion with Rory on the visual 'tone' he wanted the site to achieve. Our clooective steer on initial branding and sites we thought were interesting or in the same sphere (competitor analysis).This enabled us to convey a clear brief to the indie.

Later in the project I reviewed the wireframes, visual treatments and the final  pre-launch build. I gave feedback and signed off on each of these stages. .

All the stake holders on the project were very pleased with the end result and the smooth running of the project. http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/soundof/2011/

Wallace and Grommits World of Invention! Nov 2010

This site recently won a new media Bafta !!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ1RXM2gMYI

I was the design lead for the website working with Aardman based in Bristol. Below is the final homepage design with notes to Aardman's coders and UX team. The link colours changed later on but this became the final layout. A challenging site to produce but I was happy with the end result. As you can see it's unmistakeably an Aardman product, the tricky bit was making it all fit BBC layouts.

Hat's off to Aardman for a great flash game. Well tested, great concept and very sticky, I was hooked on it for a while.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/wallaceandgromit/wallaces-workshop/
 

Radio 1 Teen Awards

Visual treatments of this events site.

Radio 4's, What Are They Worth?

Tim Stansbie and his team at "Kite" (http://madebykite.com). The purpose of this little game was to guess how much people get paid and contrast that with how much "you think" they should be paid.

The results fed into a database that collated the scores and displayed the "average" of what everyone else thought. 


I was the design lead. I wanted something fun looking and accessible for a radio 4 audience. I didn't want them to feel like they were being tested. so we came up with the idea of friendly lego style characters of each type of person. My personal favourite is the prime minister.

I also wanted an "info graphic" to show people clearly what the figures all meant. Inspiration for this idea came from the great work done by David McCandless(http://www.davidmccandless.com/) and more specifically is billion dollar-o-gram. Kite and Sandy (producer) took on board an initial wireframe/ concept I produced and ran with it. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/pay/

Junior Apprentice 2010 initial designs

The Apprentice is really popular, the key information people want to know is the profiles of the candidates,if you deliver on that, and you can’t go far wrong. We (with Freemantle) delivered a slick looking but easy to implement design. The 'classic quotes' and candidate pages were the unique selling point of the site. That's what people wanted to know, the unique users per week stayed at around 200K throughout the series lifespan.

I was the design lead on this project. There was a tight turn around time. Mainly due to the general election and Lord Suger's labour affiliation the TV shows launch date jumped forward several of months.This meant the site had to be live several months early also..