BBC Radio 4
UCD with Flow helped BBC Radio 4 online win two Webby awards.
"It makes a lot of sense to usability test ideas when they are still on the drawing board. It's far quicker than rolling out a whole new website, then finding the flaws in it!"
- Chris Kimber, Head of Radio Online, BBC
The brief: Design a new site that extends and enhances the experience of Radio 4's audience.
By summer 2001 the BBC Radio 4 website had evolved to offer a huge range of content compiled by a variety of different teams. Radio 4 approached Flow for help redesigning the site. They wanted to:
- Understand what kinds of content their radio audience would value online.
- Come up with an information architecture to help people find their content.
- Explore how radio and web could integrate to provide a compelling user experience.
We did an expert evaluation, design workshops and iterative usability testing.
Working with the Radio 4 team, Flow followed a user-centred design approach consisting of:
- An expert evaluation of the current site to highlight the key user experience issues.
- Concept and design workshops including personas, site architecture and page sketches.
- Usability testing on wireframe prototypes.
The tests uncovered a range of usability issues including a key understanding of how Radio 4 listeners remember what they hear. Users tended to remember the topic and the time at which they heard it, rather than the name of the programme. The site architecture was revised to reflect this behaviour.
Building on these foundations, the Radio 4 team were then able to tackle visual design, copy and development.
The new website won two Webby awards.
The new BBC Radio 4 website was rolled out in March 2002. In June 2002, the site won the Best Radio Website and People's Voice Webby awards.
"User-centred design has really transformed the Radio 4 website. The team found the whole user-centred design process very worthwhile - and fascinating too."
- Chris Kimber, Head of Radio Online, BBC
