Case Study

The Challenge

The BBC sent out a brief looking for a partner to design a search solution for BBC mobile. At the time there was no existing search function on their mobile web site, so what was required was a ‘ground-up’ design. The corporation had a requirement to maximise the discoverability and consumption of their extensive mobile content and return relevant and personalised results to a broad spectrum of users and handsets.

Consult

We were selected to work on the project after a competitive pitch, partly down to our previous experience in the area (Orange Music Search), but also because we demonstrated a clear understanding of the challenges and constraints that surround mobile search. Our first challenge was to work with the BBC mobile browser team to understand their business objectives, and set the parameters for our development work by analysing their key target demographics and establishing clear content consumption and technology usage patterns. We also conducted an extensive review of existing mobile search and discovery products, identifying existing UE and technological approaches and formulating a best practice benchmark, against which we would later test our designs.

Conceive

Having seen that nothing on the market had really cracked the mobile search challenge, we decided to take a blank sheet, and looked at the potential modes of search and discovery, both from an input and output perspective. We considered at how information is effectively sorted in different contexts and created a series of search concepts, which looked at potential user input behaviours and relevant output formats. We did this through process conceptualisation, scamps and hand-drawing, moving to paper prototypes after a series of internal and client facing workshops.

Create

We took our best concepts, and went through an iterative mobile visual design and UE process culminating in working search prototypes for S60 and iPhone devices. We then conducted a round of user and client testing before handing the prototypes, wire-frames and designs over for implementation by the BBC mobile team.

The Results

The We Love Mobile search model allows for advanced content search and discovery, with the emphasis on providing highly relevant and personalised content surfacing around the corporation’s extensive mobile assets. It achieves this through a combination of intelligent content push, based on device detection, context and user behaviour and the availability of advanced post-search sorting. The search solution contains some entirely new content filtering and presentation concepts as well as a slick, engaging user interface. A first phase beta implementation is currently live on the BBC mobile site. Text BBC to 81010 or point your phone browser at http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile to check it out!