The BBC World Service

As part of our mission to create a consistent experience across all BBC services, we were tasked with applying the new visual identity across the World Service digital products. This was a collaborative effort with the external agency Wolff Olins, and it marked a significant step in aligning our platforms with the broader BBC brand.

In the early stages of the project, we conducted an in-depth audit of our existing interfaces. This helped us identify key areas that required further exploration, particularly where the new visual language intersected with the unique needs of our multilingual and culturally diverse audiences.

While the initial phase of the Chameleon Project focused on aligning the World Service with the BBC’s new visual identity, our work didn’t stop there. Recognising the need for long-term scalability and efficiency, I led the creation of a dedicated World Service Design System—a foundational step toward consistent, accessible, and culturally sensitive design across our 42 language services. 

Our product team is using a platform distinct from the UK site, yet we follow the same GEL (Global Experience Language) principles. This means creating or adapting shared components to meet the unique needs of global audiences—whether that’s accommodating right-to-left scripts, non-Latin alphabets, or diacritic-rich languages.

Initially, we faced challenges: inconsistent implementations, duplicated efforts, and late-stage accessibility fixes. To address this, I conducted a comprehensive audit of our design elements and introduced an atomic design approach to structure our components—from basic elements like buttons to full-page templates.

More recently, in collaboration with an agency hired contractor, we’ve taken a significant leap forward by migrating our design system to Figma. This included building a new design library that leverages Figma Variables to support multilingual typography needs—ensuring flexibility for scripts like Latin, Arabic, Chinese, and Devanagari. This work is still evolving, but it’s already enabling faster iteration, better documentation, and a more unified experience across our global products.

A major challenge for the World Service UX team was the limited understanding of user needs across our diverse global markets. With a constrained research budget and a historic UK-centric focus, we often lacked the tailored insights necessary to inform design decisions that truly reflected the behaviours, constraints, and expectations of our international audiences. This gap risked misaligned designs and missed opportunities to serve users effectively.

My Role
To address this, I took a strategic and hands-on role in scaling our UX research efforts. I began by consolidating existing insights into a centralised World Service research repository, making it easier for the team to access and build upon past findings. I led workshops with our UX team and researcher to prioritise 50 documented global user needs, and conducted a targeted survey in India—our largest market—using archetype models to identify the most critical needs with the highest satisfaction impact. These insights directly informed our design priorities.