‘Process’ category

The BBC recently requested feedback and suggestions on how their commissioning process and ASL might be improved. These were my thoughts – I’d love to hear yours too…

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At the SCIP event last month, the group leader asked the community organisations if they had any specific problems they wanted addressing.

“Accessibility,” said one man. “What do you mean?” “You know, blind people, that kind of thing.”

Ian shifted in his chair, and then spoke. “Do you have a problem with the site? Are people coming to you, complaining that they can’t access it?”

They weren’t, and a conversation developed. What kind of people visit the site? For what? It’s a radio website, so would partially-sighted people be coming through the site, or through streaming players, or iTunes? Is there any evidence of people using screen readers to reach the site?

How useful is it to focus on blind people when we think about accessibility?

Not everyone sees things the way you do

For us, accessibility is a broader concept. It’s about all the different ways people might want to access your site. If you have events, will people want to view them on the move? Do you need some mobile pages?

Is there lots of good information on your site? Will people be wanting to print it out? If so, you should have good print stylesheets to make the printed pages look good and not waste paper.

I like to use a computer-based calendar. I don’t want to visit your website to find out about new events. Can I subscribe to your calendar?

And what about news? I like to read mine as email. Can I get news from your site through email?

This is accessibility. Making sure your site is accessible to all your users in the way they want to interact with it. And that means blind people with screen readers. But it also means a great deal more.

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We’ve been doing some interface design for Magic Studio, a multimedia tool used by schools.

In one task, the students have to decide how significant they think economic, social and environmental factors are for a variety of objects (in this case, buildings).

Ian’s been facing the problem of how to represent the results. Three separate screens? Live feedback? Perhaps the icons should be coloured or varied by size to convey their different axes?

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Ian took a call recently. It was a man who wanted an e-commerce website. He wanted to know how much it would cost. Ian asked him why he wanted a site at all.

This flummoxed the man. He’d called a few design agencies, and none had asked him this. In fact, they hadn’t asked him much before giving him a figure.

“What’s your competition?” I heard Ian say. “Have you done a competitive analysis?”

I was feeling sorry for our potential client. I wanted to give him a figure, but Ian was right. An ecommerce site is a shop. Behind the shop is a business, and it’s the business that matters. (more…)

When we’re working on a project, we often have to compare complex things – features/services/software – and work out which one is the best in the given situation. I use a spreadsheet and create a matrix. This is what you should end up with. Click on screen shots to see the next step. There’s a brief explanation of each step underneath.

Open a spreadsheet, and in A2 type Criteria and then copy and past your criteria list beneath that, one cell per item.

Select cell B1 and type in Weighting. Assign a Weighting value to each criteria. The value represents the level of importance this item has within your overall decision. It doesn’t matter what range you use as long as you’re consistent. I used the range 0.1 (not important) – 1.0 (essential).

Starting in cell C1, label two cells for each software package you’re reviewing – label the first one the name of the software e.g Product A, and the second Score $ e.g Score A, horizontally across the top.

Select the Score value cell.

Create the formula =PRODUCT(weighting column, Score $) and press ENTER.

In the highlighted cell C1, you will see a little cross on the bottom right corner. Click and drag that vertically in that column to copy the formula to those cells too.

The formula is copied to those cells …

… and the values are calculated.

Repeat steps 4-8 for each product – add a formula …

.. copy it to all the other cells.

Starting in cell C3, review each software package against your criteria and assign an appropriate value. I used the range 0-5, but you just need to be consistent.

When you’ve finished scoring all your criteria, you want to add them all up. At the bottom of your product score rows, add the formula =SUM(D3:D11)to add up each column. Repeat for each score column, changing the values appropriately e.g. =SUM(F3:F11)

It may be no surprise that product with the highest figure gives is the favoured choice. Now go back and add additional criteria rows so it eventually comes out the way you wanted it to

I’ve been talking about the BBC Innovation Lab for several days now, and I realised I still haven’t properly explained how it works. So now I will.

The first stage is soliciting applications in a short, structured, text-only format. No fancy visuals, no investment in eye-candy, no false promises.

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At the end of Part 2, I asked a question which I failed to answer. "Could these self-conscious innovation processes ever take hold in the television world?" To address it we need to know a little more about the people involved in the Lab. (more…)

The second way in which the Innovation Labs were a good thing (see Part 1 was that they were a self-conscious attempt at a better creative process. Ever started a new job and wondered – why the hell do they do things like this? It’s crazy! You can see so many ways to improve processes. And then the outrage starts to fade as you get on with the job, and six weeks in you’re just like everybody else.

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At the end of March 2007, I was invited to the BBC Innovation Lab. The basic idea behind the Lab is to give independent producers the chance to pitch their experimental new media ideas to BBC Commissioners. More than that, though, it’s a workshop in user-centred design which has tried to set best practices for developing innovative ideas.

I think it’s a very exciting development for a number of reasons. Firstly, it tells us how the BBC sees itself. It used to be a broadcaster – radio, then TV. Forty years later the Web came along, and the Corporation kept quiet while its worker bees found interesting ways to apply it to their programmes. And when it was finally challenged, the BBC said something like, “Yes, we’re making websites. They’re for our TV programmes. It’s like leaflets. We’ve been doing leaflets for years. Nothing to worry about.”

But things are different now. Everybody knows websites aren’t like leaflets any more. And what the BBC is doing, quietly, but clearly, is saying – we’re not a broadcaster any more. We are a medium and a means – and we aim to weave the media fabric of this society.

Here’s an example: children on a school trip, heading to Whipsnade Zoo. They pile out and head to the bear enclosure. Grabbing their phones, they photograph a barcode next to the enclosure, and the next moment they see David Attenborough talking about the bears, and see the bears in the wild, on their phones.

Is this what a public service media agency in the 21C should be doing? Absolutely. Is it broadcasting? Clearly not. It’s something else, and that something else could be almost anything. And so how do you find those other things you don’t know you want? You start an Innovation Lab.

We successfully pitched to attend the BBC Innovation Lab in 2007, and it was a great experience. I wrote a few posts about it back then, and in the light of 4IP they seemed worth posting again. They’ll appear over the next few days.