Video

BBC TOP GEAR - NEWS AND REVIEWS WEBSITE FOR CAR ENTHUSIASTS

As part of a wider project looking to re-platform and redesign the website, the brief was to reinvent Top Gear’s digital experience to allow for content to grow, expand our audience traffic and increase user engagement, while aligning to the BBC’s Design System.

  • Goals

    Redefine how videos are published on the website while redesigning both content and landing pages. Ensure video content is correctly signposted and easy to access for the user, while laying the foundations for a structure that can support an iterative Video Content Strategy.

  • My role

    Mid weight UX Designer. I was embedded in a cross-functional team working closely with the Senior UX Designer, the PM, Developers, Editors and Video Stakeholders. I was in charge of carrying out Stakeholders Interviews, mapping out User Journeys, leading ideation workshops, wireframing and designing the UI.

  • Tools and Platforms

    Main design and prototyping software was Figma. Dropbox and Miro were used for documentation, and JIRA for planning and breaking up tasks.

    This was a responsive web project.

 The problems

Video content is one of the main pillars in terms of Content Strategy, however

  • It’s not well surfaced and, as a result, easily identifiable nor accessible

  • Its limited signposting throughout the site means it has a limited view window, hindering production efforts

  • The existing video content pages don’t really offer onward journeys and segregate video content

Understand

By running competitor analyses, UX audits and stakeholder interviews, I was able to define the existing User Flows, as well as the processes and bottlenecks behind the production, publishing and surfacing of videos. This allowed me to identify several opportunities, including

  • HMW better connect videos to the rest of the site?

  • HMW better integrate videos within the News ecosystem?

Define

I explored a few potential solutions, working closely with

  • Back End engineers, to redefine the video content type in the CMS

  • Front End engineers, to understand tech viability of the proposed content template

  • Editors and Video Producers, to cater for their publishing schedules

  • Product Manager, to finalise scope and prioritise features

Deliver

The new designs successfully tackle the problems by

  • Integrating video-specific sections within the main editorial pillars

  • Showcasing the range of video collections produced by the team

  • Utilising more flexible content templates which allow editors to embed videos and automate onward journeys

  • Bringing in the brand through bespoke artworks

Learnings and considerations

Working on this project allowed me to further consolidate my UI skills and closely collaborate with the Creative team to align with the Top Gear Magazine and TV Show sub-brands.

It was also a chance for me to really interrogate the brief I was given and challenge a few assumptions around how video content should be treated. The work I did not only enables our users to experience all the video content we have, but also lays the foundations to sustain a stronger Video Content Strategy going forward.

The new Video Ecosystem has been launched in June 2021. Traffic to video pages has seen an uplift since these changes were releases, thanks to improved workflows and better signposting across the site.