This was one of the last BBC sites to go live with the old 800X600 layout. I was the design lead on the "Holby City" redesign. The client brief was to create a site to complement the Holby Series on BBC1.
After client investigation 'key words' that we want to reflect were agreed, these were "Sexy", "Night Time", "Passion", "Cerebral"and "Alluring".
After a process of wireframing, user testing the and amends. we came up with the final set. User testing threw up some interesting results; no-one wanted to know about the actors playing the parts. Everyone we tested said they were only interested in the characters, they wanted to 'suspend' reality on the TV show and they wanted to do the same on the website. Also having a 'behind the scenes' section was perceived as a low priority.
This was an 'in-house' design and build job on the main site. we went through several iterations of the look and feel. Stake holder management was an issue on this one, with editorial not being able to make it's mind up (there were 3 of them). I employed a talented flash developer to create the 'Year by Year' section. he produced a great interface with rich video content and slick transitions on animation to other information on the character or year; all the content was uploaded by an xml file make it easy to amend or add extra years.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mhd6 URL of the current site.
