BBC Gateway homepage - 10 May 2011
There were a number of business reasons why we decided to redesign the BBC’s intranet homepage and start work on sorting out the rest of the intranet;
- Increase efficiency
- Promote simplicity
- Encourage collaboration
- Make it easier to do stuff
and move on from the previous homepage that had been knocking around in a couple of incarnations for the past six or so years.
Our strategy focussed on five broad areas;
- Pan-BBC governance
- Editorial leadership
- Technical development
- Content production
- Systems and tools
And we’ve not only redesigned the homepage, we’ve started work on the top level landing pages, and soon we’ll start on the rest, including on-line applications.
This is a big gig and shouldn’t be underestimated as to it’s complexity. Not easy, but is anything that’s worth doing ?
Intranetmania's blog 
Phil
Any reactions to the simplified search? It no longer has the “people” vs “gateway” split. Is find people just bakedin?
Brian
Hi Brian – thanks for the comment.
The previous search options primarily surfaced the same (more or less) results, so there was little point in having two different options. Following some tweaking of the search engine resulting in an improvement of the results, and a slight amendment of the displaying of the results, we didn’t think it was necessary to continue to offer the two separate options of “Gateway” and “People”.
If users now choose to search for individuals then the search engine will present them as the first option in the results, followed by any mentions of their names in webpages.
We’ve received little feedback that it’s a deterioration of service, so we take that as a success. We’re currently undertaking a survey of Gateway, including the new homepage, so the results will indicate how well they’ve been received. Or not!
HTH
Thanks Phil.