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The BBC have been developing more AIR apps, this time in preparation for the Beijing Games. In a slightly similar guise to the BBC’s previous AIR application this app gives you a desktop entrance point into the changing new updates and events surrounding the Olympic games.

Editorial content is at the heart of the BBC, so wrapping all of that content up into a usable and likeable desktop app seems like the perfect place for Adobe AIR. My first impressions are that they have spent more time and effort on this that the previous AIR development task. The concept is that you can choose the five Olympic events you want to follow then the AIR app will show new stories relating to each event type. I couldn’t get to remove any of the five I had added, I tried dragging them off but found you can just replace them by dragging a new sport icon over the top.

A simple reader in reality but the BBC olympic branding really stands out. When you launch the app for the first time you get to choose a ‘skin’ or character to adorn your reader. The characters are animated and would be ideal for kids to have on their desktops while keeping up to date with the Olympic news.

The BBC olympic AIR app also has the capability of displaying the event calendar. On this calendar you can set automatic reminders that alert you to an event starting adjusting to your timezone automatically, nice. A good addition would be to include a list of your event alarms, that you could then adjust, print or remove.

Interestingly we all know that AIR apps have some questionable accessibility issues and the BBC have a whole page explaining that:

While the BBC is committed to making its online services as accessible as possible, support for accessibility in Adobe Air has not allowed the BBC to make the BBC Sport Desktop Monkey completely accessible to all users, especially screenreader users.

This is a very brave move by the BBC to adopt AIR, a new approach to existing technologies that is in it’s infancy. I think we can all appreciate that the BBC must uphold certain levels of accessibility, however embracing these future technologies as an enhancement of existing services that are completely accessible is to be applauded.

Design eye

The Beijing Games AIR app, fits with the BBC games branding. One thing that has carried through from the previous BBC app is the inability to design a suitable and graphically fitting scroll bar, please just use a normal scroll bar that is obviously a scroll bar.

Would also be good to drag the app around using the characters head that protrudes above the rest of the app. This would just be good interaction design in my opinion.

Technical eye

The BBC olympic AIR app was built using Adobe Flex 3 and various BBC content feeds.