What's On - Events Listings

Team

• Project sponsor –  Tony Ageh
• Project team Members
  • PM/Development Producer - Nic Sabinsky
  • Design lead – Byju  Sukumaran
  • Interaction Designer - Neil Clavin
  • Usbaility Engineer - Joanne Alden
  • Editorial Lead – Jason Daponte & Susan McFarland
  • Technical Lead - Tim Brown
    

Background

The BBC had a poorly performing listings service. It had been created on a local level, which was superb, but very inefficient. It created lots of duplications and inconsistencies. This in turn made it very difficult to share information beyond the local regions; it was also very costly and made it very difficult for their audiences/users to find events that may interest them.

Objective

• Manage the database & site structure

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  • To focus the local listings into a main database, to be managed centrally.
    
  • Syndicate all local and genre based services.
    

• Maximise editorial value

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  • To minimise editorial effort and maximise editorial accuracy.
  • To improve user experience, make finding events easier and more intuitive.

Methodology

We needed to identify whom our primary users were – how to connect with them, what tools they needed and what would make them revisit the proposed service. BBC commissioned some research into how their potential users organise their time using 50 of BBC target users around London and the Home Counties. From this research, two main types of 'users' emerged, Planners & Opportunists.

We as a team  (editorial, technical and user experience) conducted our own research across towns and cities – interestingly enough we found that most people we interviewed had gone out to an event, but finding the instigators (planners or opportunists), proved very difficult. In most cases the people we interviewed had been “organised” by someone else – the instigator. This was factored into the process during the recruitment for the focus groups for the project.

Following this audience insight, the team used role-play to step through some of the proposed scenarios for the service. This highlighted points of pain and eureka moments. This was an iterative process using prototypes, made firstly from printouts to rough click throughs, to get an achievable model.

We finally used focus groups to acquire the right feeling for the service. Our audience was wide and varied and we needed them all to feel that this service was a reliable, easy and targeted to them.

Results

Traffic increased by 10 fold within the first few months of launch.

Phase Two of this project required the development of a tool enabling regional BBC radio stations to input information about local events including small gigs (unsigned bands), lectures, clubs and societies, into this centralised database - thus creating a unique listings service available nationally.