This session was led by Mat Hampson, and he asked for ideas about how to improve the BBC’s global site navigation.

The BBC uses a (newish) page layout system called Barlesque, which manages the headers and footers on each and every bbc.co.uk page you visit. It replaced the old Barley system, and does quite a lot of things normal people (and some geeks) don’t even notice.

“But how we can we improve on this?” Mat asked us.

They already provide the set of developer tools to help build sites according to the standards and guidelines, but what functionality would we like to see? Barlesque already provides truly global navigation across all BBC properties, like the World Service and Vision, as well as across different CMS’s and platforms like the blog network and News.

One of the main ideas (to my mind) was the concept of using the navigation to convey information. This isn’t just about showing a crumbtrail, but providing feedback that the user actually wants. For example, I might get an advanced notice in the navigation bar alerting me to the start of a new season of my favourite programme. Or I could receive live cricket updates as my team’s game progresses - or any other team I choose for that matter.

At the moment it’s cookie based, limiting the amount of data they can store - and it can be a huge amount if you factor in all my possible iPlayer viewer data alone. Integrating it with identity services will allow them to have better access to information that actually relates to me as a person. This, of course, works only for the content I allow them to use. Other possible ideas included changing the global navigation to adapt to you as a user - your background, habits and recent history - and display a “customised” navigation that will guide you to the content you want.  Â