Case study: BBC Your Paintings

We worked with the BBC, the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF) and with Oxford and Glasgow Universities for the Your Paintings project. The collective vision was a platform from which the general public could explore, access, and learn about the 200,000 paintings currently in public ownership.
 

The brief

Test the controlled vocabulary, to gain a better understanding of how users relate to and find relevant art works. Modify the facets and categories to increase usability of the site, and feed the data from the user research into concept design and content strategy.
 

What we did

Research included:

• Card sorting
• Concept design
• Content strategy
• Interaction design
• Personas
• User research

In the first round of user research we carried out sessions with 18 users in London, Dronfield and Newark‐on‐Trent. The sessions used a diverse sample of users, including learners, the mainstream audience and art lovers. Each session included card sorting to test facets and terms (vocabulary), reviews of painting descriptions, and imaging browsing, searching and visualisation tasks using existing websites.

We analysed the data collected in this research to provide the input to concept design. A key part of this analysis was to identify patterns of behaviour. These are located by finding groups of users that follow each other as they are annotated across a behavioural axis. We used this analysis to create four personas - a learner, a mainstream user, enthusiast, and a researcher.

Concept design began with an interim workshop involving key stakeholders from the BBC, PCF and partner organisations. This workshop set the priorities for the concept design and subsequent user research and testing. Using the results of the user research we created revised facets and terms and block diagrams illustrating the content of six key web pages. To support further testing of the guided navigation we also created a small 'clickable' prototype.

A second round of user research and testing was then conducted to further validate and refine the facets and terms and to test the initial design concepts. These sessions were carried out in London with six users.
 

The results

We were able to produce solid recommendations for the page content and design, including description styles. There were further changes to the facets and subject hierarchy to provide concrete ‘trigger’ words that users will easily recognise when scanning the top-level categories.

From our research it was made clear that the site must focus on attracting and interesting the mainstream audience, as well as providing the detailed information needed by researchers and academics. Our findings and recommendations were received well and will go on to help the BBC and PCF partnership to produce a really engaging, useful and popular site.

Congratulations to the team at the BBC for winning a BIMA Award 2011 in the Arts and Culture category.

Visit the BBC Your Paintings website (opens in new window)
 

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