Back to basics with Flip Video

June 7, 2008 By 3 Comments

In architecture, less is more, and the same appears to be true for video news gathering. The simple Flip Video camcorder heralds a time when every journalist carries a video camera.

I bought a Flip Video camcorder for my wife for mother’s day. At under $150, it was a bargain. But the primary motivation was having a camera she sould depend upon. Our simple DV camcorder took great video, but seemed to always need charging, or a new tape, and thus wasn’t available at the spur of the moment.

Flip Video Ultra Camcorder         Flip Video Upload Menu

Power is supplied by AA batteries, which are easy to buy anywhere on the globe. It holds about a hour of video, and it’s easy to transfer, edit, upload and delete files. Still images can be extracted from the video.

The ease of use makes it the video equivalent of an old-fashed reporter’s notebook. A journalist armed with a notebook, laptop, Starbuck’s card and Flip Video may have everything necessary for newsgathering today.

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Online usability questions that need answers

March 13, 2008 By Leave a Comment

If your home page has a rotating menu of featured stories at the top, do users look at it, understand how it works and use it to navigate the site? How about a slideshow with text, sound and images: Do users attend to all three of these items at once? How about the number of links or other informational items on a home page: What number is ideal? When do we cross the line between being informative and becoming overwhelming?

If you’ve ever wondered about these questions, you are not alone. Some of the sharpest minds in online journalism gathered at the University of Minnesota’s Institute for New Media Studies about a month ago to discuss some of their pressing research questions and to set the research agenda for DiSEL: The Digital Storytelling Effects Lab.


Tyson Evans, LasVegasSun.com, discusses the value of research

The group is part of DiSEL’s first official consortium. Eleven news organizations made financial and time commitments to help Laura Ruel and Nora Paul (authors of this column) determine what to test with eyetracking, usability, and effects research methods.

It was no surprise to anyone that there were many more questions than we could answer in the first round of research. We had to prioritize. In this column we’ll let you know what’s on the horizon. We also invite you to add your thoughts to the mix by completing the DiSEL survey.

Riding a carousel; wearing a belt

No, it wasn’t a circus (well maybe!) or a fashion show. The terms “carousel” and “belt” were the focus of some big design questions. Carousels, the group determined, are the pieces at the top of a home page that rotate images and/or headlines to promote stories. Martha Stewart’s site, http://marthastewart.com, was one that the group referenced as having an interesting form for its “carousel.”

Graphic
Martha Stewart’s site directs users to content with a carousel.

In this case the carousel can be rotated in an autoplay mode (user clicks the “play” button) or manually (user clicks the section name).

“Carousels are coming up a lot,” said Jaime Hutt from startribune.com. “Are there standards?”

Others also wanted to know what works with this form.

Chris Snider from desmoinesregister.com was curious if it is more effective to use a carousel or have a user scroll a panel of story images to navigate to content that is not on the home page.

“What works in carousels and what doesn’t?” he asked.

Similar to carousels are belts. These navigational items usually appear mid-page or towards the bottom of the home page and also direct users to content that is not on the home page.

Belt questions centered around how users navigate and interact with them. Feilding Cage from Time.com discussed some of the questions his organization ponders.

Graphic
Time.com has a belt on every page.

“We are curious about the functionality of our belt,” said Cage. “Are users reading items on the second scroll and beyond? It may be more of a usability issue, but could be an eyetracking one as well.”

Cage went on to explain that there are 10 items on the belt, and there is a belt on every page. He said the top five items (the ones seen without clicking on the arrows in the upper right or left) are huge drivers to the stories they promote. There is a question of how to drive users to the other five featured stories.

“Should we use a ‘next’ button or is it fine that the belt moves from the first five items to the next five on one click?” he asked. “People most often click on the photos to get into the story.”

When is it TMI?

What is the ideal amount of information to present, and how should it be labeled so viewers notice it? How many supplemental links are useful, and when do they become too much?

“I was always struck with the plethora of information entry points on NYTimes.com,” said Nora Paul. “Can we test for impact on behavior? What about cognitive overload?”

The multimedia producers agreed that the issues of how much information to include – and how to successfully present it – are crucial.


Josh Hatch, USAToday.com, addresses labeling links and page density

“We want to know what images people are looking at on our home page,” said Josha Hatch of USAToday.com. “How much chatter do people read? What else are people looking at?”

Hatch also noted concern about whether users notice items such as interstitial ads, sharing buttons, polls and Flash interactives. He and others were curious about whether handcrafted story content (that looks similar to print design) is effective in capturing users’ attention.

Video viewing

Online video has become an expected media form for all news sites – not just those with broadcast stations as their parent.

YouTube.com also has influenced how users interact with video online. (Notice where the video with this piece resides?)

The questions about video presentation were numerous, but the group narrowed it down to three.

What is the best way to let a user know that video is available? Should video be labeled with an icon of a camera, with words, with a player that already is on the page or with a combination of these elements. A local news site in Raleigh recently won a regional Emmy award for its player that is a combination.

Graphic
WRAL.com recently won a regional Emmy Award for its video player that combines methods of interactivity.

What is the best way to present the video once a user clicks on it? Members of the consortium want to know if video should be embedded on the page and play in a specified spot, or should it emerge in a pop-up window at a larger size?

“On CNN, if I see a video icon, I don’t click on it because I don’t want to go to the video player,” said Hatch.

He added that if video is placed in a Flash player, many are not aware it is an option.

Cage added that Time.com is experimenting with different player interfaces, some similar to YouTube.com.

“Has YouTube trained people?” Hatch asked.

What is the best way to handle advertising with video? Advertising combined with online video is creating revenue for news sites. Consortium members decided to look at this issue by proposing experiments that assess the effects of the frequency and positioning of the ads. They also would like to discover if pre-video ads make users leave a site.

How to show your slides

Similar to video, audio slide shows are another basic – and expected – mainstay for news sites. Many questions arose.

“To what degree are users reading captions or script to audio?” Hatch asked. “Also, if ads are swapping out beside the slide show, how does that affect the user experience?’

“What is a good size photo to put on a galleries page?” said Amish Desai from yahoonews.com.


Gabriel Dance, NYTimes.com, discusses slide show usability issues

Consortium members agreed that the questions above should be studied. In addition, they listed these other important areas to research:

  • Should users be provided with the length of time for an auto play slide show, or does this information make them choose not to invest the time in the presentation at all?
  • What is the best way to present a slide show with multiple chapters?
  • Where is the best place to put cutlines?
  • What are the differences in user behavior when ads are placed next to slide shows vs. above slide shows?

    This meeting was a true collaboration among an energetic group of multimedia thinkers. Partner news organizations sent the following individuals to participate:

  • Dallas Morning News: Noel Gross
  • The Des Moines Register (Gannett): Chris Snider
  • Las Vegas Sun: Tyson Evans
  • The New York Times: Torben Brooks, Gabriel Dance
  • San Jose Mercury News: Randall Keith
  • Star-Tribune: Jamie Hutt, Jason Erdahl, Matt Thompson, Will Tacy
  • Time: Feilding Cage
  • USA Today: Joshua Hatch
  • The Washington Post: Nelson Hsu
  • Yahoo! News: Amish Desai

    Watch this column for updates as DiSEL embarks on answering the questions this group introduced. Columns on the DiSEL research projects completed last year will also be appearing soon.

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    The news of the future

    February 26, 2008 By Leave a Comment

    The problem of veracity and realism in digital graphics has challenged Web editors and designers since the outset of online journalism. Where do we draw the line between fact and fantasy? How much latitude can we give the audience to create its own realities?

    One answer has been to define Virtual Reality and create immersive applications that meet journalists’ notions of epistemology – the grounding of knowledge in verifiable facts and information. In contrast to artists, online journalists do not put a high value on illusion. We are not in the deception business. Nor are we gamers.

    On the other hand, digital technology gives online journalists a chance to experiment with multisensory presentations, and we have long favored giving the audience opportunities to participate in storytelling. Harking back to MSNBC’s baggage checking exercise and other early versions of hypothetical scenarios, we have given the audience increasing latitude to explore the possibilities of digital landscapes from a first-person point of view.

    Over the last several years, more effort has been put into elaborate calculators, civic games and hypothetical scenarios. The goal has been to use the immersive techniques of gamers “as an amplifier of thought,” to use the phrase of one design theorist, Brenda Laurel. For journalists, this requires creating a new vocabulary, a new metalanguage. Another theorist, art historian Jonathan Crary, describes it as “a radically different practice about the possibility of presence within perception.” To the print newsroom, it may seem more like Web journalists playing with dangerous toys.

    A fresh example of where to draw the line in using Virtual Reality to tell the news has been created by the National Geographic in its documentary “Six Degrees.” It is based on a book, has a Web version, appeared in mid-February on cable and satellite TV and is set to be released in IMAX theaters in a 3-D version.

    Each of us will come away from seeing the various versions of “Six Degrees” with our own opinions. But here, for the sake of discussion, and in no particular order, are my thoughts about a high-minded and expensive effort to put the audience into a hypothetical alternative world of global climate change. What do we see?

  • Mixed realities to create an appearance of the real
  • A topic that is large and complex has been reduced to the representation of a natural force, the rise in temperature due to greenhouse gas emissions
  • A point of view from outer space – a metaphor of the space voyager looking down on Earth
  • The application opens with the expectation that something will happen – the beginning of a plot – with an ominous sound reminiscent of the opening of “Jaws.”
  • The presentation Is not linear but has a design structure – the possible perspectives are not infinite
  • The ‘AS IF’ possibilities have been limited for the purposes of logical and affective clarity
  • It purposefully dissolves fixed limits on both time and space
  • It creates an ephemeral reality with an ontology that is founded on the process of global warming
  • The images are transient and malleable – they play upon memories and reinforce our experience (Memories of camping vs. civilization being reduced to tents on the Arctic Circle.)
  • The premise assumes shared information and a common ground – this is not a debate over whether human activities have provoked global climate change
  • It investigates problems but offers no solutions
  • The interface both enables and represents – it emphasizes action, raises alarms
  • The representations involve direct sensing and cognition (sounds of whale songs, melting ice, violent crowds)
  • Scenes are selected, arranged and represented so as to both intensify emotion and condense time (But are they hokey, especially the newscasts?)
  • The design has implicit restraints, but they arise naturally from our growing knowledge of the context
  • The explicit restraints – the temperature scale and Lighthouse Buttons – frame our actions
  • The multisensory experience creates empathy – we vicariously experience what the characters are experiencing
  • The overall impact is to give us a vision that changes our beliefs – our ways of doing things must change (or else…)
  • The application is built upon the storage and retrieval of information in a variety of media types to provide an organic experience that involves the whole sensorium.

    For what it’s worth, my favorite scene is the sidewalk café in Paris (Degree Four). It is reminiscent of “Last Year at Marienbad.”

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