Designing for Experience

While doing some youth research earlier this year I was surprised to see many teenagers on YouTube, but not really to watch, but to listen to music.  A free way to listen to a ton of interesting music.  I hadn’t really thought about doing that, but here they were all doing it. I’m not sure if the fine people at Google knew about that kind of emergent user behavior, but they are sure going to profit from it.

So I’m not sure how I didn’t notice this when it came out last week (oh yah I was sick in bed) but you should read this: Official Google Blog: I clicked to buy and I liked it.

Essentially viewers on YouTube will soon be able to click over to Amazon and the dreaded itunes store and buy music used in a video, or if the video is of a video game, you can buy the game (presumably from Amazon).  No word yet on how much they will get from this, and if they will share with the video creator (not likely).

Many have wondered how Google would monetize it’s massive purchase price of YouTube, aside from a relatively small attempt at ads in the videos in a non-obtrusive way, they haven’t done a lot.  Here it goes, but how will it affect the experience of YouTube?  Let’s wait and see..

It’s true, today is the Usability Challenge 2008.  I have chosen this page:

Higher Education Resources

This is part of an ongoing project I am working on with the Lumina Foundation for education.  This page is a new way of visualizing and finding a large amount of information.

Lumina has amassed a large amount of publications over the last several years that all are related to their mission which is helping people achieve their potential though education.  People who work in this area directly with youth and adults who want to go back to college are called college access professionals, and my hat is off to these hard working people.  Of course there are plenty of researchers who also work in this are, usually in education departments.  I have met many in both groups.  What all these people including Lumina’s staff members rely on is high quality resources like the ones that have been gathered, but how does one search through these?

Instead of search all of the resources have been tagged (with multiple tags for each item, usually including the year of publication).  These tags have been presented in a tag cloud, where larger text means more things with that tag.  The really new thing is that if you click on one item, it shows you how many things are in that tag, and you may keep on clicking on tags to narrow your results.  The total number is shown at the top on view results tab.  When you are ready you can click on that tab and see all the items.  It is a very cool way of browsing, and the reaction of people once they understand how to use it is very positive.  The problem here is that it is a new convention, with very few affordances.  There is a “view demo” but most users don’t see it, and many users often have the volume down on their computer even when the video comes up.

The solution I am proposing for this particular page is a short lightbox popup that shows the user to click on a tag, then a second and then click view results, showing it graphically, textually and then quickly fading to a point on the screen with a question mark on it.  Clicking on the question mark will replay it slower and have the option for sound as well as givign a link for an even lengthier explanation (which would be around the length of the current demo).

It will be important to use cookies so that once a user has successfully clicked on the view results tab the lightboxed pop-up will no longer show, and that the whole strategy be evaluated regularly to see if it can be improved and when people understand it well enough we can eliminate the lightbox, but keep a pulsing question mark or something like that.

I am also emailing the results of this to Lumina so that it can be implemented. Usability Challenge 2008 is in the can.

When I was at WorkshopONE and talking to a fellow participant about the evolution of media and how old media are often driving new media.  This is what I’m talking about: in our house we don’t watch TV but we watch House, Lost, and Smallville online.  While these are old media, we watch them via new media.  In addition each show has it’s own website and of course Lost has a great wikipedia site, and many other fan sites and facebook pages, Smallville has countless sites, and I assume House has a bunch as well, but haven’t sought them out personally.  All these websites and Facebook pages, and blogs are driven by the old media artifact.  Much of the action that happens online is about old media stuff.  Those that own old media have diligently tried (and often failed, but often they are getting better) to increase viewer’s engagement with their shows and brand online, but usually the most engaging things are what the fans themselves are creating.

Then came Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, a three act miniseries, a creation of Joss Whedon and his brother.  It debuted online first, with a really transparent marketing plan and integrated social media efforts that seemed very genuine (or Authentic as Gilmore & Pine would say).  Why is this important? This is new media driving new media, and the real proof of concept and tipping point for what will become an explosion of already established and aspiring content creators going online first or online only.

I’m not saying that Dr. Horrible is the first, but I believe that it has been the most successful to date to start online and make some real money.  How much exactly remains to be seen, but being in the top purchases since it became available on iTunes means some major cash, and DVD sales haven’t even started yet. A cursory search online reveals that there are many people creating a ton of content online like getting lyrics online.  The lyrics phenomenon on that link deserve their own post, if you look a fan simply  posted them as best he or she could, and then as people got on and saw errors they commented, and he responded by taking all the edits.  Great group collaboration, and probably at a faster rate than you would imagine.

I have been interested that  BitTorrent downloads are super fast of Dr. Horrible, both of the videos and the songs.  I think this is because fans love it so much they want to share it.  While this may be at odds with a content creators need to at least pay for costs and ultimately make money, I believe though that if people like it they will pay for it in some form (I fully intend on buying the DVD).

So what will happen from here? We will see more things starting online and and moving to old media, and even better, we will see more high quality online only productions.

I must disclose that I’m now what may be called a fanboy of Dr. Horrible, and that there is a dearth of hard numbers (though you can see some guesses on revenues here and here) on viewership and purchases so at least some of this is speculative and educated guesses. That aside I couldn’t resist writing about this today, haven’t seen it yet? Download it today!

PS The above link is NOT an endorsement of using iTunes store, which I personally detest and have NEVER personally purchased from, though I have benefited from using my wife’s account.  I believe that the manner in which they lock down content is unfriendly at best, and the quality of sounds files is, well… it leaves something to be desired.