BBC US Election Results Service

Deliver live election results data to a hugely diverse audience alongside the BBC’s rich editorial content. The results service needs to set out data and information clearly, be easy to understand, and make it easy for users to find what they are looking for no matter what device is being used.

A considerable amount of research was available about the Results banner that I helped create for the 2016 US Election, as well as some general audience data. Common themes that would influence the 2020 service became apparent as we reviewed the documents.

We did not create personas specifically for this project. But, an important part of the process involved studying our previous personas, as well as analysing our new election archetypes (created by an external agency).

Although based on UK General Election users, common election user needs were identified in both sets of studies. Combining this with BBC Audience data, we were able to build a clear picture of who we were creating the election service for.

We worked closely with the editorial team and analysed their research to ensure the UX, product, and editorial objectives were aligned. There was also a lot of quantitative data to analyse from the BBC Audiences team. Reviewing both pieces of research revealed some key insights that tied into the UX brief.

Two key trends the Politics team needed to be aware of were:

• US news providers promote the personality running for president, whereas UK providers focus on a simplified overview – was this something to aspire to?

• US news providers had very informative services – would this also work for a UK audience who, for the most part, lack in-depth knowledge of the US Election process?

I created a basic sitemap and some user flows to help us agree on what deliverables would be required from the UX team. We would later employ the services of a UX architect to create some in-depth flows and site maps to help clarify any issues brought up by stakeholders.

Explainer

The Explainer pattern was a replacement for the ticker used in 2016. This allowed us to deliver easily digestible, contextual information about what was happening in the election without leaving the results service.

Banner configurations

Certain pages carrying the Results banner needed specific configurations. The main changes revolved around the use of the election logo, the use of the Explainer component, and the position of specific links.

World Service

We were also delivering the US Election service in multiple languages. I had to carry out a series of explorations and tasks before these could be signed off. These were:

• Investigate ad placement

• Ensure flexible components are stress-tested for all languages

• Ensure Cyrillic and Arabic fonts do not cause unforeseen bugs and errors

One of the key business objectives for this election was a service that was coherent across all devices, platforms, and services. This required a weekly design alignment meeting with the visual journalism, TV motion graphics, and infographics teams to present my work, help agree on brand guidelines, and ensure all work had a consistent look and feel.

The BBC’s commitment to providing an inclusive service resulted in an in-depth review of the service before launch. The chosen method was accessibility swarms, in which each member of the team chose a few devices, visited the responsive site, and looked for anything that did not adhere to the BBC’s Accessibility Guidelines.

The remaining components were supplied by a third party. As a team, we still had to manage the delivery of the components as there are specific design, engineering, and accessibility guidelines that all BBC products need to adhere to (e.g., colour contrast, fonts, JavaScript, assistive technologies, and so on).