The BBC News Website was redesigned to offer users a more seamless and engaging way to access live and archived news across both desktop and mobile platforms. The goal was to present the news in a visually appealing and intuitive layout, with an emphasis on making content easy to navigate while maintaining the BBC’s trusted brand.

As a Software Developer, I was responsible for frontend development, focusing on building UI components, improving the overall user experience, and implementing business logic to make the site as performant as possible.

Developed in collaboration with a team of talented engineers, designers, project managers, and analysts, this was a challenging but incredibly rewarding project, requiring advanced technical skills and an attention to detail to deliver the best possible user experience.

The site was built using React.js and Styled Components, ensuring a highly maintainable, efficient, and responsive UI. It integrates with the BBC API to pull in live data, with real-time updates throughout the site. The use of Context API allowed us to manage state effectively, while TypeScript provided the necessary type safety to ensure a smooth development process.

We used Storybook for UI component development and documentation, allowing for isolated component testing and easier collaboration across teams. This also helped us create a robust UI library for future scalability.

Performance optimization was a key focus—by implementing lazy loading for key parts of the site and utilizing memoization, we were able to significantly reduce load times and improve overall efficiency. We used React Testing Library to ensure high-quality, reliable code that would perform well in production.

One of the major challenges was ensuring seamless video streaming across both desktop and mobile devices. We created custom modules and optimizations to guarantee smooth playback, regardless of device. Additionally, we employed animations and transitions to create a more dynamic, intuitive user experience.

The results were remarkable—the new version of the website was considered a huge success by BBC, with millions of users engaging with the content on a daily basis. The success of the project was recognized with a Silver Award at the 2024 BIMA Awards in the UX category.