The Idiot Box
May 10th, 2007Design, Software
It may sound odd, but I’m really not sold on how most news sites are currently using video. At best the topic engenders me with a mild sort of ambivalence: “Meh, that’s nice.” These days my typical reaction to gee-whiz embedded video doodads in article pages is to ignore them. It’s a pathological habit caused by subtle nagging issues. I think we can, and should, do better.
What it really boils down to is a forced rate of consumption.
Force Feeding
When I’m reading a news article I can instantly and effortlessly shift from attentive reading to scanning. I can vary the rate of consumption to suit my needs, at any moment and without difficulty. Text is conducive to this. That’s paramount in news/editorial environments, where the value proposition is all about timely information exchange. As a user I can choose to be more or less engaged as the situation merits. I can choose to sacrifice depth for speed (or vice versa) whenever I darn well feel like it—and still get what I need.
I can’t do that with video. At least not in its current incarnations.
Video forces full engagement on its own terms. The time it takes to watch the video is the time it takes to watch the video. Sure, you can try speeding it up (in a rare few applications) or scrubbing around with the playhead, but both are poor analogs to scanning text. With most videos the best you can hope for is a passing idea of context, maybe a notion of tone. (Imagine jogging around your standard talking head news video. Still worse, voiceover scenes.) And both methods require too much fiddling on the user’s part anyway.
A (Few) Modest Proposal(s)
One solution might be what I call, for lack of a better term, “scanning captions”. Imagine if when you clicked on the playhead (or used a keyboard shortcut) and began scrubbing, a text overlay with a few words instantly appeared, and updated as you moved around, quickly telegraphing what’s going on in the video during that particular time span. Essentially these are just captions that activate automatically when scrubbing, but with much more abstract text. Not much—just enough to convey context.
Or you could take those same captions and place them alongside the video as segment names, highlighting the current one and letting the user jump to to any of them with a click.
These are just some off-the-cuff ideas I sketched out in a few minutes this afternoon. The point is it wouldn’t take a whole lot to offer a more genuinely useful experience to the user.
Stay Tuned
Maybe I’m splitting hairs with all of this. I hate to drag out the old cliché, but I’m definitely not advocating throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, video is a useful medium in its own right. Yes, we should keep using it. But until some of these little nits are worked out it will probably never be quite as rich (and humane) a resource as we hope.
David Sleight is a web designer living and working in New York City, and the Deputy Creative Director of BusinessWeek.com
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Comments
Lauren Scime May 11th, 2007 at 3:14 am
better yet, what if you could scan text and at the start of each paragraph a video icon would indicate that you could watch a clip of this news? that way if you read something quick and decide, “hey, i’d like to see a talking head saying this” you can click on the video icon.
David Sleight May 11th, 2007 at 10:32 am
So what you’re talking about is more of a mesh of text and video? Placing smaller segments throughout the text in context? When I worked in with online textbooks we had a couple of products like that and it seemed to work well.
I think for news content though my concern surrounds trying to raise the “scanability” of video closer to that of pure text.
Lauren Scime May 11th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
I was kind of being facetious (halfway anyhow) about scanning text in news and viewing the video - this would only really work for actual event footage, not the talking heads persay, as that would definitely be redundant.
I definitely agree with you and I especially like the idea of the content menu living next to a news video as it eliminates the need to scrub around with the playhead altogether.
sidenote: those damn hampsters - someone has got to put them in their place!
David Sleight May 11th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Ah. I think the content menu is definitely the more intuitive of the two, plus you can scan the topics with a glance. The “scanning captions” might be an option when space is a concern.
If you think the hamsters are bad you should hear what the penguins have planned.
Lauren Scime May 12th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
If space is a consideration, then there is also the possibility of using JS to make a popup menu on mouseover of the video module.
And yes, those penguins are a surly bunch. They look sweet and innocent but once in water they become torpedoes of doom and destruction. (we kind of had it coming though, melting the Antarctic on them and whatnot…)
David Sleight May 12th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
As usual, Futurama is on the case…
Angelo May 14th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Taking one more step back from the issue, it becomes an issue of relevancy.
Content should, in an ideal world, convey only what is necessary to completely convey the idea, regardless of medium.
Chris Coyier May 14th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
I feel the same way about news videos. My problem is partially technology. Many of the news sites I end up visiting use some plug-in that I don’t have or isn’t supported on my machine and I just end up annoyed.
I dig that “lower third” text overlay concept. Both the concepts look very newsviney. I would love to see this kind of thing in actual use.
Calvin van Hoek May 16th, 2007 at 9:13 am
I think this has a broader impact. About five years ago there was a very loose, vague debate about where the web was going. I think many web professionals liked the idea it was distinct from established media, especially TV. My concern is that with the rise of video (as the means of communication rather than an extra bit of eye candy to support some well-written text) all we’re doing is moving TV online, and bringing all its excesses with it.
I think there’s also a deeper issue at work here too. Visual media, like TV, video and cinema, are passive mediums. The written word, in just about any form, is an active medium. It requires effort on behalf of the reader, and it means choices have to be made. The benefit of active forms of information means you have more control; as evidenced by the authors comments about controlling the speed of reading, and being able to make initial, snap decisions about whether to scan or read (or bookmark).
However, television is the leading form of communication. Anywhere TV is introduced it dominates, with traditional media like newspapers being quickly overtaken. I view this as a bad thing for the same reasons listed above, it removes choice, and means that someone else is making a decision about how I get my information. More positively, the reason I like the web is it allows me to get involved, and make choices for myself. Whilst content shouldn’t just be limited to text-based content, the slide towards video is a worrying trend.
More ominously, there’s a great tendency for all passive media to gradually slip into entertainment mode. Each mode of communication develops its own rules of engagement, and in the case of TV and video that basically boils down to quick soundbites. Although TV and video should be excellent vehicles for complex subject matter, they all too often become a quick and dirty method of delivery, relying on keeping people occupied and entertained, rather than engaging the audience. The first casualty tends to be thoroughness and depth of analysis. Although, whilst literature fans will sing the praises of a well thought-out piece of prose, most of the world would rather tune in from their couch.
Finally, the most troubling issue is that traditional TV, and possibly online video, tends to be less democratic. The cost of production for an article can be nil, but even a modest video requires greater resources. This makes it hard for small players, like individual bloggers, to make an impact if the ‘competition’ has money. At the moment this isn’t a factor, as the web is fairly flat. But if video becomes the main means of communicating online then it very well could be. The implication of course is that less people can make their mark, making for a less-involved forum for communication.
So, sorry to go off at a slight tangent from the topic, but I believe this has implications beyond the ease by which we access information. In short, I believe a move towards video is more than just making it harder to scan; it forces us to be passive observers rather than participants. In practical terms it means comments like this one by me are less likely to happen – after all it’s pretty hard to write a casual rant with a remote control.
Lauren Scime May 18th, 2007 at 10:21 am
I came across this article on VentureBeat - seems there is a company called Veotag now developing a product that addresses this very problem:
http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/16/veotag-raises-750000-for-video-time-stamp-tagging/
unfortunately their demo content is tame in comparison to your stories of killer hampsters and wombats curing cancer.
David Sleight May 18th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
$750,000? Oh snap! I knew I should have filed my patent sooner! The hamsters will be pissed!
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