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Brief
The BBC World Service Trust uses media and communications to help reduce poverty and promote human rights in developing countries. In November 2009, the Trust launched English in Action in Bangladesh, a major new project designed to increase English language skills to improve people’s livelihoods and aid access to the world economy.
The project is one of the most innovative cross-platform media interventions designed to aid development anywhere in the world. It provides high quality English learning tools across mobile, television and the internet to millions of people, many of whom live on less than £2 a day.
Central to the project is BBC Janala which turns the mobile phone into a powerful, low-cost learning device through the provision of more than 250 audio and SMS downloadable lessons to the growing 50.4 million mobile users in Bangladesh.
To make the lessons affordable, the BBC teamed up will all six of Bangladesh’s mobile operators to offer a universal service at half the price of a typical IVR call or SMS. Each 3 minute lesson costs 1 Taka (1 pence) a minute, making a class less than the price of a cup of tea at a Dhaka stall.
The mobile lessons are supported by an e-learning website www.bbcjanala.com, where users can access learning content for free, upload their profiles and interact with other learners both in Bangladesh and around the world. Audio and video content is also syndicated on sites such as Face Book to YouTube.
Atticmedia’s brief was to design the online brand, for English in Action, create the visual approach to the learning website design, produce the visual assets and create the brand guidelines.
Outputs for the brand were to include social networking sites, mobile phone applications, CD-Roms, TV idents and offline media such as advertising, merchandise, display stands, van livery and signage.
Special attention had to be paid to how the brand would work with other brands such as the BBC World Service Trust logo and brands associated with the English In Action television series.
Atticmedia was also required to help the BBC World Service Trust identify and prioritise functionality for the bi-lingual CMS powered site.
Strategy
BBC World Service Trust had already carried out extensive research into the internet usage of 3,000 mobile phone users in Bangladesh and was planning further user testing to inform the online design and build.
Building upon that, user testing workshops were carried out both with Bangladeshi diaspora in the UK and with different socio-economic classes across Bangladesh to gain an understanding of their personal views, feelings and outlooks across a range of different services, media channels and potential service providers.
Demand for English is high amongst 15 to 45 year olds, with 84% telling the BBC they want to speak the language and 60% prepared to learn on their mobiles.
That research covered four separate strands: brand, technology, information architecture and visual designs.
The website had to appeal to a primary, low disposable income audience base who have a beginner or intermediate level English skills.
Accessibility was paramount. Each page of the website needed to be 45k to download, so that content was accessible to people using slow internet connections. More than 50% of internet users in Bangladesh are struggling with speeds of 14k or less.
Strong design was key to the success of the project. In the research process it was found that the majority of people were strongly patriotic and identified with rural, environmental and natural visuals as opposed to urban or city led images.
The name came from the audience, with 26 focus groups across the country suggesting the word ‘Janala’. In English, ‘Janala’ means window – and according to the audience research, the word has strong poetic connotations in Bangladesh – making people think of new opportunities and light and hope.
The concept of Janala (”window”) was born.
Execution
The creation of the BBC Janala online design was a unique experience with extensive audience participation and user centred input. This approach enabled rapid prototyping in a developing country from brand development, through card sorting, wireframe testing and visual design testing.
Atticmedia worked closely with the BBC World Service Trust in Bangladesh, conducting user testing on learning and design approaches in both the capital Dhaka and rural villages.
Through focus groups together with more than 100 hours of one-to-one user testing, the team worked with young Bangladeshis from low-income backgrounds to develop an approach that worked for them.
To inform the process further, Atticmedia generated a portfolio of 1,500 photographs of places, infrastructure, signage, typography, billboards and the advertising approaches of other new and emerging service providers, together with garments, materials and newspapers as wider sources of reference.
Back in the UK, the challenge was to coral all of the research and information we had gathered into a fully fledged brand and brand guidelines.
To assist the process, Atticmedia employed a Bangladeshi subject matter expert to help sift through the evidence and categorise it.
The design of the logo itself was a five stage process which started with typography and progressed to colour and patterns. From here the window concept started to form, linking the project with a concept of a “window to knowledge”. Central to the logo are two square shapes, representing partially open shutters, with the sun visible from behind.
The four colour logo is adaptable and works in different scales.
Refinement of the logo involved the BBC World Service Trust’s creative team in Delhi and retained advertising agency, Grey, who together created the strapline “You Can Do It If You Want To” (“Chaile Parben”).
Next we looked at the development of a range of original illustrations that would add a sense of life to the brand and supporting communications. The images developed are both aspirational and positive, drawing heavily on natural and cultural references such as tigers and rickshaws. The style of the illustrations was inspired by traditional Bangladeshi painting on clay pots.
The illustrations are now being reproduced for offline advertising campaigns including print and outdoor.
Results
BBC Janala is a modern, fresh and relevant online learning tool which allows BBC World Service Trust to engage with target users in a way that the young people of Bangladesh can relate to.
The roll out was supported by a press conference on 12 November and television and newspaper advertising campaigns. 10,000 people registered to become members of the online community within the first ten days of the site going live in Bangladesh from November.
The website has only just been launched and phase two sees the addition of discussion forums and blogs, but the response has been solid so far. The site has had more than one million page impressions since launch, and more than 120,000 visits from 105 countries. But more than 100,000 of these visits are from within Bangladesh.
BBC World Service Trust’s advertising campaign will increase the users community further and there are plans for a UK based launch to the Bangladeshi diaspora in 2010.
The project is funded by the UK Department for International Development through English in Action, a major educational initiative launched last year to raise the language skills of 25 million people by 2017.
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