Inspiration into flattery?
The BBC has long been the beacon of inspiration for many a person in all aspects of the creative industry.
- Image via Wikipedia
The BBC introduces a genre of programming and other TV networks take that genre on in their own way.
The BBC introduces a style of web interface and very quickly other sites start to introduce elements of that design style and language.
In some cases they just copy all the elements outright (from Your Site is Valid).
Then again some take the basic concept for what it is (a great example of user interface and interactivity design) and does it in their own way.
And then again still – some copy a bit of both – the elements themselves, the design style AND the navigation, interaction structure.
The latest site I’ve noticed doing just that came to me in the form of a television channel recommendation from my father in law.
Its an Iranian English language news channel called Press TV and its web presence bears a remarkable resemblance to the BBC news site.
You can see it at http://presstv.ir
The left hand navigation is the most obvious – the gray bar with red line at the end to show the area you’re on, then when you move to a section with sub-indexes it drops down in exactly the same way the one on news.bbc.co.uk does.
The actual index area is almost identical to the generic BBC news online index and the story page is layed out almost identically as well.
In fact the even the social bookmarking links are more or less the same as on BBC News.
- Image via Wikipedia
Now the site isn’t identical in every way – the right hand navigation is very different, the top and bottom layouts are very different and not every index uses that style.
But the basic structure is close enough to the BBC site than can be put aside as pure coincidence.
However, this is where some would get all indignant and cry foul play – personally I think its a good thing.
There are so many sites online with piss poor user interface design that when something clearly works – I think it should be embraced and used across the board.
OK so PressTV.ir uses a similar colour scheme and layout – but if they can’t take it from a public service broadcaster who can they – share and share alike and in turn make the world wide web a less confusing place.
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Thanks for the mention. I do agree that when a good solution is found people should use it but we should also be careful about not standardising to much. Diversity is crucial for the future of the web.
Very nice site btw, I really like the magazine style design.
Thanks – to a certain extent I agree with you. In fact the reason I opted for the magazine style design was because I was getting bored of the standard blog template – but I still have a blog index with posts listed in date order.
But for certain navigation elements I think standardisation is a GOOD idea – sites that have random images in the middle of the page to represent links seem to have (thankfully) died off in the last couple of years as people realise usability is vital in web design.
A user should in theory be able to go to a site and instantly know their way around without having to think about it too much – so having clearly defined links and using standard navigation structures is important – but I agree with you that they should all be 'looking' the same – just that they need to be in similar places or work in similar ways.