If there’s one media site that’s been in desperate need of a makeover for quite some time, it’s the BBC. It’s trademark old-school content grid with left column navigation can still be seen within lower levels of the site, but the main site has been completely overhauled in favor of total user customization, executed absolutely perfectly.

EVERYTHING on the home page can be customized. While this is nothing new, few have managed to get it right, and BBC manages to allow complete customization of color, layout and content without sacrificing aesthetics.

The BBC offers an incredible amount of content via their website - promoting this mass of content and providing a means of customization and predictable return experiences to the user poses a significant challenge. With the new interface and user-centric features, I think they’ve achieved something truly remarkable.

Be sure to check it out.

Presenting work to a client can be pretty scary. No matter how much you believe in a particular direction, design is a very personal and subjective thing, and chances are that you’ll often get thrown an unexpected curve-ball. Some of my all time favorites include:

• “I don’t like it.”
• “Hmm… not quite there yet.”
• “A good start - looking forward to seeing the final options!”
• “Why can’t I click on anything? It’s not working. Fix it.”
• and let’s not forget… “I played around with it in Photoshop a little - let me know what you think of this!”

Humor aside, it’s important to extract quality feedback from clients in order to move forward and lock down a final design direction. I often send the following instructions to clients in order to aid in the quality of design feedback and help in narrowing down the options presented:

An interface design consists of a number of facets. These include:

• Communication - more of an emotional facet, this relates to the overall message you’re left with from viewing the design.
• Styling - This relates to the overall look-and-feel and it’s art direction, i.e. rough, slick, corporate, surreal, etc.
• Elements - different objects / groupings of objects that form part of the overall interface, e.g. logo’s, navigation, paragraphs of copy, images, etc.
• Composition - the way these different elements are positioned around the interface
• Colouring - the overall composition will make use of a particular colour scheme.

When providing feedback on a particular design or set of designs, it’s important to dissect the design and comment on each of these facets INDIVIDUALLY. In other words, comment on the design as a whole (Communication - the emotional feedback) but also analyze the design in terms of the other facets. As a guideline, these are the questions you should be asking yourself:

Communication
• How does this design make me feel?
• What is the message I’m left with after viewing this design?
• Is this the desired message?

Styling
• Do I like the way this particular design is styled, or should it be styled differently?
• How would I describe the styling? Use as many adjectives as possible to communicate the desired styling.

Elements
• Do all the elements work well together?
• Do any elements require more emphasis?
• Which elements do you like / dislike?
• Are there any elements missing that should have been included?
• Has an element been included that need not be there?

Composition
• Do you like the overall composition of the design?
• If not, what don’t you like about it?
• If you’re happy with the composition, is there anything you might change within it?
• Think about your users – does the composition work in terms of the user experience? In other words, is everything logically positioned?

Colouring
• Do I like the colour scheme used?
• If not, is there a particular colour scheme I would like to see?
• Break this down to the individual elements - Is there a particular element that isn’t working with the current colour scheme? Would I change the colour of any particular element?

In asking yourself all these questions, you’ll get an idea of what you like / dislike about each design. When multiple designs are presented, you might find that one particular design is 100% correct and you’re able to sign off that particular mockup in order for us to move on to the next phase of the project.

If this isn’t the case, please think of the first round mockups as a MENU from which you’re able to pick and choose exactly what you would like, i.e. elements from design (A) mixed with styling and colouring from design (C), composed as per design (B). This allows us to gain a much better understanding of what you like / dislike and allows us to mock up a second round design far more efficiently.

I’ve found this approach to help a great deal in improving the quality of feedback I receive from clients. Feel tree to try it yourself - I hope it helps!

One of the biggest challenges a designer faces if simplifying the complex… creating order out of chaos. It’s our job to present data in an effective, visually elegant manner. More often than not, this can be accomplished with conventional methods of displaying data - paragraphs, tables, pie charts and the like, but from time to nature of the problem calls for a solution that’s far more creative and interesting. Add Flash to the mix, and throw in some Papervision 3D and you get Spectra Visual Newsreader.

It’s essentially an online RSS feed reader created by MSNBC.com in order to present masses of content in an interesting and engaging way. It allows the user select news channels grouped in categories and sub-categories, and then displays the headlines in a 3d space that can be explored.

As awesome as Spectra is, there method of displaying this data is one possible solution to the problem of presenting headlines in an innovative, non-linear way. The field of Data Visualization fascinates me, because the options are really limitless.

Here are a few links to get the juices flowing:

• Smashing Magazine’s article ~ Data Visualization: Modern Approaches
• Digg Labs
• Visual Complexity

An agency that never ceases to amaze me is Goodby, Silverstein and Partners. Their ideas are groundbreaking, and their work is top-notch - definitely a company who’s work I check out regularly for inspiration.

Since 1993 they have been working with the California Milk Processor Board, and were responsible for developing the Got Milk? slogan, credited with putting life back into milk sales after a 20 year slump.

They’ve done some incredible work over the years, from print to TV to direct, but the stuff that really blows me away is the interactive work. Over the last few years they have produced a number of award winning digital campaigns that really set the benchmark in terms of (a) generating outstanding ideas for marketing a relatively bland product, and (b) pushing the medium (and the budgets by the looks of things). I could talk about each one of their amazing campaigns for hours, but I thought it would be good to give a short(ish) overview of their most recent online work… so here goes:

Cow Abduction & Brittlactica

In 1996 they launched a website entitled Cow Abduction that details the mysterious disappearance of countless bovines going missing from dairy farms across the globe. The site includes a whole host of features like eye witness accounts, photos of farmers’ messages to aliens, and even a catalogue of products like decoy cows, UFO traps and ‘Cowoflauge’. Watch the eye witness accounts, and prepare to laugh your ass off.

At the same time, another site launched - Planet In Need. The website centers around a planet called Brittlactica, whose citizens suffer from a range of ailments and who live in regions like ‘Insomniastan’, ‘PMStonia’, ‘Papau Hairthinny’, and ‘Cavitopia’. In a recent visit to Earth, they stumbled upon a ‘miracle elixer’ that fixes all their problems. Genius.

Get The Glass

In 1997 they launched a beautifully executed 3D board game called ‘Get The Glass’ that centered around the Adachi family who are afflicted with a genetic condition. They also happen to be thieves…. on a mission to do whatever it takes to steal a glass of milk located in ‘Fort Fridge’. The board game features a number of micro arcade-style games to keep the user entertained - just try and avoid landing in ‘Milkatraz’. Be sure to check out the case study on Goodby’s website.

White Gold is White Gold

Their latest campaign (2008) focuses on a musician (glam-rocker) called White Gold (and his two band mates, ‘The Calcium Twins’) who rates milk above any other white substance. The site features White Gold in all his milk-tastical glory, and allows the user to explore the White Gold world, unlocking various widgets and freebies along the way. As always, the campaign is complimented with a strong presence on Facebook, Myspace, Youtube and even iTunes. Serious follow-through.

The Latest: Got Milk? Brand Site

A few weeks ago, a brand new mother site launched - Got Milk?. It features a stack of games and quirky characters highlighting the many benefits of drinking the beverage, for example testing your milk IQ or head-butting milk cartons. The site is highly engaging and interactive, and is bound to keep you entertained for quite some time.

I can’t wait to see what Goodby will come up with in 2009.

1eighty has only been live for a grand total of three weeks, and I’ve already redesigned it. Isn’t that just typical? When producing a new piece of work, I always go through a sequence of emotional phases that go something like this (and I don’t think I’m alone):

• Start working on the interface
• Start loving a direction
• Decide that “this is my best work ever… Damn I’m good!”
• Start rolling the thing out
• A few days before completion, realize that the design sucks…
• …but it’s too late to turn back…
• …so there’s no option but to launch it.
• It’s live, the response is good, and people seem to dig it…
• …but the thought still persists… this could have been better.
• Maybe next time?

Does this sound familiar? I sometimes even experience this with other designers’ work I oversee. Is it just a coincidence that C.D. = Creative Director = Cognitive Dissonance?

Luckily this time the site is my own, and I can change it as often as I like. So why did I opt for this type of look and feel? Watch this space - I’ll chat about that in an upcoming post…

Just been featured on We Love Wordpress - an online showcase of Wordpress powered website. Nice one!