• A new design which is more fun to use, and distinctively styled.
• A range of personalisation features that let you shape your very own BBC iPlayer experience.
• Integration with your social network account that lets you add a social dimension to your viewing and listening.

You can find out more about the new features in Anthony Rose's post.

Less obviously, to make all of this personalisation work well for 5m+ visitors each week, we've developed an entirely new technical platform, discussed in technical architect Simon Frost's post. It's been an exciting project with many challenges, both design and engineering, along the way.

Image: Screenshot of the new BBC iPlayer design

So, a few people may be wondering, why are we changing BBC iPlayer when it's already pretty successful? The impetus for change has come from two directions: firstly, we have a long-term plan to constantly evolve the site for the benefit of our audiences. A main theme here is personalisation - simply put, a way to get the programmes you love with less clicking (and thinking!). Secondly, we wanted to connect BBC iPlayer up with the users' online interactions with friends - to bring a social dimension to watching and listening.

While social networks are now a well established phenomenon, socially enhanced TV and radio aren't. It's early days yet, but we're pretty sure that this is going to be an important facility in the near future. Together, we hope these features represent a crucial evolutionary step in the enjoyment of online TV and radio. Until now, the focus has been on getting programmes to users packaged in a coherent experience - this next step is about allowing users to interact with the service and each other around our programmes.

Given that we'd be making some major changes to a popular product, we were very conscious of the need to be careful. While some users are generally receptive to change (especially where it brings obvious benefits) others may be more cautious. The key design challenge was to add in these richer, more interactive capabilities without detracting from the overall simplicity of the experience. It's been possible to reconcile these competing goals (richer interactions, simpler experience) by making some basic design decisions that keep things simple - most notably separating TV from radio, and reducing the number of modules on the BBC iPlayer homepage. You can find out more about these challenges in this post by our lead designer for the project, Fabian Birgfeld.

Of course, as we developed the designs and the product, we've tested them with real users at key stages to confirm we're on the right track and identify and address issues they raised. More recently we've been trialling the new BBC iPlayer publicly which with the help of your feedback has given us the chance to iron out a few kinks, some of which David Blackall talks about in his post. Most notable amongst these have been some issues with buffering in the media player, and disappearing downloads, issues that should be resolved by launch day and we will continue to monitor and put right.

I'd like to finish with a few interesting stats from the beta:

• Usage of the beta quickly built to 8% of the total (and has more recently been ~10%).
• Users of the beta site play marginally more programmes each day (2.4 vs 2.3) than users on the regular site.
• 18,000 of you signed up for the social features and linked BBC iPlayer to your Twitter or Facebook profile.
• Just under 700,000 of you 'favourited' programmes, adding an average of 2.5 programmes each. Your most frequently chosen programmes were Eastenders, Doctor Who, Top Gear, Mock the Week and Sherlock.

This is an excellent start and bodes well for the launch. Check out the new site and let us know what you think by commenting below or responding here.

James Hewines is Head of BBC iPlayer.

We have for some time employed LSOs in order to improve user experience of the media player by storing the last position of incompletely played programmes to enable the auto resume function and to remember a user's settings preferences. We also use them for statistical reporting to help us to better understand how our content is consumed. This reporting is on a strictly anonymous basis and we do not pass this data to any third parties. Users have always had the ability to disable LSOs so that this data is not stored, as explained in the Flash Cookies section on the BBC's Privacy site.

However, we are currently moving the media player to the latest version of ActionScript (an Adobe programming language) in order to deliver an improved media player. This is a complex process and will take several months of work by our technical teams. It means that for some of that time the media player will sit across both versions. The two versions of ActionScript are unable to speak to each other directly and we therefore need to use the LSOs as a tunnel to pass messages between the two.

We hope to be able to stop using LSOs for this technical purpose later this year but in the meantime you will not be able to disable LSOs without losing access to the BBC's media player. If you have disabled LSOs, you will need to re-enable them for the BBC website in order to use the media player.

Although this use of LSO is within the BBC's Privacy Policy I recognise that this is not an ideal situation. My technical teams are now working on completing the move to the latest version of ActionScript as soon as possible so we can remove the dependency. When we've done this users will once again be able to turn off LSO and still use the Media Player.

Thanks for your patience while we complete this work.

James Hewines is Head of BBCiPlayer

The new iPlayer site's been up for a week now and we've had lots of people getting stuck in; usage of the new site is now peaking at 8.3% of the total.

Thank you for all your ideas and constructive criticisms - we've been tracking these across the blogs, messageboard, Twitter and even calls to the good old BBC call centre.

As promised in my previous post, here's a round up of that response to let you know what we're doing with it. The overall impressions are resoundingly positive with favourable comments outnumber the negative ones by 3:1. The bad stuff has been largely concentrated in some specific areas, and that's where I'm going to focus here.

First why did we split TV and Radio out? @hairyhatfield via Twitter

No option to play Radio in existing window? I like it in a tab rather than having extra windows.... #BBCiPlayerfeedback @richbishop via Twitter

#bbciplayerfeedback Why are you separating TV and Radio favourite? I like both!

I'll refer you to Ali Button's post for the detail on this here - but will say I think the new arrangement maps much more closely to most users' "modes", and has allowed us to make a whole swath of things simpler. On a related point:

The radio pages are broken - they all open in pop-ups. If I want to open a page in a pop-up, *I* want to choose to open it in a pop-up, rather than having it forced upon me. For about the last 5 years, all decent browsers have had the ability to open pages in a new tab. Your redesign breaks this functionality. (At 00:35am on 27 May 2010, Dan Sumption via the BBC blog)

We've taken this point on board - we're trying to make things simpler and more consistent for radio users, we're going to talk this feedback over with the guys over at Audio & Music. Next, a few people thought the signup process for the social features was a pain:

#bbciplayerfeedback Plus why must I have a BBC ID, I just want to connect with Facebook! @hammertime via Twitter

another bit of #BBCiPlayerFeedback (well, iD feedback, really): it's not 100% clear what the "Tweeting from BBC" checkbox *does* @nevali via Twitter

I agree - this is something I know we can make easier and clearer, and we have some cool developments in the pipeline. Some of this is coming very soon, some will over the next couple of months. Check out the post Si Cross is doing next week for details. In the meantime thank you to the thousands who've signed up for sticking with it!

I hate to repeat things over and over, but when we are going to see keyboard shortcuts for iPlayer? Just space to pause/resume. Please!!! (At 2:24pm on 28 May 2010, Ed Lyons Via BBC Internet blog)

I've just checked this out and it does work - you've just got to tab onto the play control (this is to make sure it works as part of the full keyboard based navigation we provide for accessibility). I'll run this by the guys and see if we can fix the 'no focus selected' behaviour to be more helpful as Ed suggests.

Can I ask that you keep the low bandwidth version? My web access is through a mobile dongle with a capped usage and the low bandwidth version is a far cheaper way of watching programmes albeit with a lower picture quality. Even with adaptive bandwidth, the overall download amount is going to increase dramatically. (At 5:36pm on 26 May 2010, Stuart Ian Burns via BBC Internet Blog)

This one's a miss by the team - thanks for raising it, we're adding it back in very soon.

I am detecting a disappointing lack of RSS feeds in the new BBC iPlayer. #bbciplayerfeedback @saxsux via Twitter

I'm hoping that the lack of RSS feeds on the site is only because it's in beta - please don't remove these for good! (At 11:34pm on 26 May 2010, Ben Via the BBC Internet blog)

I can set your mind at rest - these didn't quite make the scope for the beta but we'll migrate them over to the new site soon. In the meantime we'll keep all the old feeds running. One thing that's slightly off topic, but has attracted comment is the availability of BBC iPlayer on Android devices:

re. iBBC iPlayer beta: Still no Android support,, especially bad after booting the unofficial app off #BBCiPlayerfeedback @nevali via Twitter

I appreciate there's some strong feelings on this subject too. We're currently waiting on Flash support on Android to deliver a service for that platform. I understand this is coming in the not_too_distant_future - watch this space for further announcements. I know there's a lot of demand for an app too - we're waiting to hear from the BBC Trust soon on whether we're allowed to do apps, so we look forward to seeing the result of that decision.

Please keep your feedback coming! We'd love to hear what you think, so please:

• Tweet including #bbciplayerfeedback
• Click the Site feedback link in the site footer (or click here)
• Post a comment below
• Post on the BBC iPlayer message board

James

James Hewines is the Head of BBC iPlayer.

• Read Introducing the all new BBC iPlayer which covers the new features in the iPlayer beta.

I look after everything you see as a user, including new developments and keeping things running smoothly every day across the many platforms we support.

Wednesday was a really exciting day for the iPlayer team with the launch of a major new beta version of the site - adding a range of personal and connected features, and rethinking the way the site is designed to keep things as slick and simple as possible. You can find out more about what's included in Anthony Rose's post.

The other big piece of news came in the publication of the latest figures for iPlayer - the highlight for me here was the record monthly play requests which are now hitting 123 million.

A big thank you for all your comments and ideas so far - we've had a great response so far and the team are closely following the reaction. Although I can't promise to come back on every question individually, we'll be posting updates as the beta progresses and give a response on the key things that come up starting next week. We'd love to hear what you think, so please:

• Tweet including #bbciplayerfeedback - sorry, it's the world's longest hashtag ;-)
• Click the Site feedback link in the site footer (or click here)
• Post a comment below
• Post on the BBC iPlayer message board

Below you can check out the video we've put together to try and give people insight into some of the thinking behind the new site. It's a chance to meet some of the people on the team and find out a bit about how we work, and why we've changed it. This kind of thing is a bit of a departure for the BBC and we hope people find it interesting. Tell us if you do in the comments on this blog.

James

James Hewines is the Head of BBC iPlayer.

Our team work incredibly hard to try and make iPlayer the very best of its kind. It's of course always exciting to receive awards recognising these high standards, but we're especially proud to be seen to be helping establish the future of TV. These efforts are already producing real results too - in the 12 months to September, monthly viewing inceased by 95% (to 44.5m requests). With this in mind, I'd like to extend my thanks and congratulations to everyone involved.

Watch this space for lots more innovative stuff in the year ahead!

James Hewines is Product Lead, BBC iPlayer

• More posts about iPlayer on the Internet blog.
• Visit iPlayer.
• Visit the iPlayer FAQs.

This is the latest in a series of things we've done to build on the iPlayer's contribution to the BBC's role as a public service broadcaster.

One of the key themes of public service broadcasting is meeting the needs of audiences that tend to be neglected by commercially-driven broadcasters. Simply put, commercial broadcasters rely more heavily on a broad base of appeal for their programmes, so you get more 'middle ground' in their output.

The BBC on the other hand, is able to offer a more diverse mix of content.

Although many people think of the BBC as One Great Big Organisation, in fact the BBC is organised along more federalist lines. Aside from the 'corporate body' bit, where the BBC iPlayer team work, there are a whole host of regional divisions - such as BBC Scotland, BBC Wales/Cymru and the many local English outlets. (And not forgetting Northern Ireland.--Ed (with thanks to our Twitter following for pointing out the omission!)

Each of these divisions is empowered with the editorial autonomy they need to ensure we end up with a mix of content which is authentically local in flavour. The opportunity for BBC iPlayer is to reflect this diversity in the content we carry. At the same time, the sheer physical dislocation of these divisions means that they have evolved distinct production and distribution systems. The challenge is stitching these elements together so we don't expose our seams to the audience.

Local content

From the launch of BBC iPlayer 10% of the TV programmes scheduled for the service have been ring-fenced for regional programming - this is typically about 40 hours each week. A good start perhaps, but we felt this didn't reach far enough into what the BBC has to offer.

Over the summer, working with BBC Cymru, the team developed a new platform that allowed the Welsh teams to publish their programmes directly into the infrastructure that sits behind BBC iPlayer. This allowed us to make the 2008 Eisteddfod festival available to viewers and you can now catch up on Welsh-language shows like Mosgito and CF99.

More recently we've extended our publishing capacity to provide a solid base of support for the newly launched BBC Alba channel which serves the needs of the Gaelic-speaking community in Scotland. This is a really useful complement to the broadcast service, particularly as digital broadcast services are not available in some of the more remote areas.

Local languages

To state the obvious, what BBC Alba and BBC Cymru have in common is that the programmes are in the respective local languages. In a parallel stream of development, we've been working to bring the BBC iPlayer experience to these audiences in their own tongue.

First off the blocks was Welsh mode, again developed in partnership with the folks from BBC Cymru. You just select the Welsh-language ("Cymraeg") in the toolbar at the bottom of every page...

...and the site flips into Welsh mode.

Of course sites that have already established that users want to interact in Welsh can link users directly in to Welsh mode and save users from manually switching it on. Also, in a few weeks we'll be moving this selection into the user's preference settings in the BBC's Identity login system which will mean it is 'sticky' between visits.

As I mentioned above, we've just extended all this to provide a similar level of support for the Gaelic language. The basic concept is very much consistent with the other language modes and it looks like this:

Of course, BBC iPlayer is a fast-moving service with new features coming along every few weeks, so please tell us if you notice any quirks with the site in Welsh or Gaelic mode - since our development teams are mostly English speakers, errors can be trickier to pick up in our test processes.

BBC local radio

Up until this week, local radio stations were only part-integrated into the iPlayer experience. This meant that finding a programme was hived off separately and the playback experience was inconsistent with that for national radio. Last week's release changed all of that and we now have a fully joined-up experience across the entire radio portfolio. John O'Donovan's will be posting soon explaining this in full.

What's coming up next?

So we've now got pretty good coverage of both the local content and the languages people use, but what's in the pipeline for BBC iPlayer with a local flavour? First up, since the radio audience consistently tell us that they appreciate the ease of use and sound quality you get with the MP3 listening experience, we're broadening out the coverage of MP3 material across all the stations. Expect to see substantial progress on this starting now and continuing into early 2009.

Meanwhile, in television we're looking hard at our media management platform to identify the bits that don't work as efficiently as they could. By making more of the computing capacity, and reducing the need for unnecessary human intervention we'll be able to increase the number of hours of material we can deliver each week. Since the greatest opportunities for growth in coverage are around regional programming, this is the area where you'll see the biggest impacts of this work over the coming months.

James Hewines is Product Lead, BBC iPlayer