BREAKING: Live reaction to BBC News website

If you haven’t noticed the BBC News website has been redesigned. More information and comments on The Editors blog.

I just love when massive websites make a big change. The best part is reading all the positive and negative comments, especially those people who chime in with their expert opinion. Have they crunched thousands of hours of analytic and UX testing data to make assertive comments on the new design? I doubt it. But people don’t like change and that can sometimes be a big enough reason to affect design direction.

In this case it really isn’t though. BBC know what they’re doing. Which makes comments like this all the more entertaining:

Hate the new look. Will start looking elsewhere for my news content.

Here’s some design consultancy provided for free:

Quick tip, it doesn’t have to look flash to be good. Plain and simple is always best.

Ha! “Quick tip,” is such a brilliant way to start. Can you get anymore condescending?

I am been a web designer for 16 years.. I know what I am talking about.

“I am been”? You don’t even know what you’re saying right now! I could go on but there are too many ridiculous comments to mention, read them all here.

Hopefully this illustrates the point of avoiding the dreaded design by committee. There are several suggestions of “should of had a poll”, a poll of who? Many people are resorting to the old “SOMEBODY THINK OF THE LICENSE FEES!”. Are the BBC suppose to poll all license fee payers every time they do anything at all?

Can you name a major website that has involved every single person clambering for their opinion to be heard? No you can’t, because those projects never get finished. They get run into the ground. Every ounce of logic and creativity gets squeezed out trying to please everyone.

This doesn’t mean the design process should be done behind closed doors. There are many ways to involved key decision makers and target audiences, and I’m willing to bet the BBC know more about this than most.

A few people out there have a little sense:

I have worked in newspapers for nearly 35 years. At EVERY design change, we were flooded with letters and phone calls from people who hated the new look. If we spoke to any at length, we always found, without exception, that what they hated was not the new look but change.

Quick update – here’s a cool link on the BBC News design history with screenshots dating back to 1999 – we’ve come a long way!