Last year, I posted a rant titled Bad design from BBC?. In the post I complained about how the BBC website handled "errors" and suggested that perhaps it'd be best if was handled silently.

Almost a year down the line it appears that BBC has finally realised this bad design and described it as "confusing results". In this blog post on the BBC website, editor Steve Herrmann describes the changes which will be made to overcome "some potentially frustrating experiences for you, as well as some significant technical complications for us". Going forward UK and International visitors to website will see a different versions of the homepage. Whereas previously visitors could select which version of the homepage they wanted, now they will not have that choice anymore. I am not sure exactly how current system is technically complicated.The blog post gives an example:

For example, international users selecting the UK version might follow prominent links from front pages only to find messages saying things like: "Currently BBC iPlayer TV programmes are available to play in the UK only". (The BBC doesn't have the legal rights to show content on the iPlayer abroad though that may change in future).

From my experience described in the earlier post, it appears that BBC is already using geolocation. I reiterate, that if BBC already knows that you're and international visitor, then it's a simple matter of not showing the iPlayer! How technically hard is that? Using this silly example as a reason to determine which homepage you get is downright lame.

Small wonder then that the comments for that blog post are full of complaints. At the time writing, there were 610 comments and the 610^th commentator Glueman2 noted his complaint as "...nos.461 negative comment". Despite the complaints, I doubt BBC will stop from going through with the changes.

My previous post was a rant about the farcical Olympics coverage by NBCOlympics.com. This post isn't a rant, but highlights a similar issue. Anyway...

Today, for some reason I got interested on a piece olympics news on BBC.co.uk about India's first Olympics gold. Upon visiting the site, I found out that it was Bindra who did it for India. Go Bindra( and India).

What really got my attention though was he screenshot below (red rectangle and the arrow is mine - focus on that). The screenshot shows what I call bad design.

Why bad? Several reasons but chief amongst them:

1. The user is let down because he/she is not getting the full story with the media.
2. The icon used to display the bad news seems to suggest at first glance that there might be something wrong with the page. An error perhaps.

I've been designing and developing websites for some years now and the years have taught me a few things good and bad, about design and development of software. Infact BBC's own web development effort  (http://www.scribd.com/doc/903215/The-Glass-Wall) has taught me a thing or two. This somehow doesn't fit into what has been a great effort otherwise of the BBC web developers.

A website is essentially a software application, developed using code written by developers. As such, the code which spits out the "error message" was written by a developer who wrote something to the effect that if the the user is not from the region then display the error message. What's the point? As it is, it serves no purpose. Unless the error message is a hint that I should apply for my UK residency with the UK government, it serves no purpose!

I am only guessing, but it appears they've replaced the media with an image. Brilliant! Why not leave it at that?

Worse still is that most pages show a list of Olympics Video and audio highlights with invitingly placed "Watch" links. Get there and you'll get the "error message" instead.

The point is, if the developer can write code discover what my territory is, the user can write code to handle the access to the media in a friendlier way.