Advent of the Online Video

Judson Laipply’s ‘Evolution of Dance’ video has been viewed online over 112 million times – and that’s just on Youtube. ‘Charlie bit my finger’, an innocuous video in which baby Charlie bites his brother’s finger and giggles afterwards, has been viewed 77 million times. And a 5-second clip of a chipmunk with a seemingly startled expression has close to 13 million views.

The list of internet video phenomena is a long and strange one. They all come from the same place: no marketing, no production budget – usually, no planning at all! Beyond the whimsical charm of these videos, and their incredible viewing figures, they speak volumes about what online delivery has done to video in general.

Bandwidth constraints on uploading and downloading mean that a lot of online videos are seen at low quality. Youtube converts all uploaded video files to Flash (.flv) format, which leads to inevitable declines in quality. Yet even with the option to download high quality files, most users wouldn’t have the patience to do this. Quality is not the major concern for the online viewer – it’s all about the idea. A video will rise and fall on the strength of its idea, how funny or bizarre it is and, accordingly, whether it has mass appeal.

Popular video virals also spawn ‘remixes’ and ‘mash ups’ with other topical icons. A little searching reveals an ‘Evolution of Dance’ starring Optimus Prime, of the Transformers franchise, a video entitled ‘Charlie bit Sarah Palin’ and a mash up of the dramatic chipmunk and Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’. While these videos haven’t been viewed as many times as the originals, they still reach incredible numbers (the Thriller chipmunk currently has 700,000 views). What this shows is that we are no longer passive viewers, but actively recycle and recreate what we see and enjoy. Video is no longer controlled by a small group of people with extensive training and high-tech equipment.

The media and advertising sectors have recognized the potential gains of online video, particularly the viral. If successful, a video viral will cost very little to make yet have wide exposure. There isn’t even a need to market the video. If they’re working well, virals – true to their name – will spread throughout the Internet all by themselves.

However, before businesses jump on the bandwagon they should consider two important points. First, virals and the potential responses to them are not especially open to being commercialised. Many have a subversive tone, inappropriate for broadcasting corporate messages. Indeed, reactions to an ‘Evolution of Dance’ sponsored by Pepsi would probably be negative. Furthermore, if a corporate-sponsored viral is unleashed, the creators should have every expectation that it will be warped by viewers – perhaps even turned against them.

Second, it is very difficult to predict which ideas will take off. The successful virals have the fascinating effect of snowballing – eventually their attraction becomes the fact they’ve been viewed so many times. It’s an online version of our natural instinct to be drawn to the crowd surrounding a street performer – we reason that if something is of that much interest, it must be important to us too. In theory, any video could begin to snowball – there is no sure-fire hit.

Considering Youtube has only been around since 2005, it is hard to imagine what video and its delivery will look like in five, ten… twenty years’ time. I can’t wait to see the ‘Evolution of Video’ viral on the Youtube of the future.

Tom

Sleigh-Hem fever!

This year we decided to inject some shameless fun, and a little healthy competition, into the build-up to Christmas with a highly addictive seasonal game called Sleigh-Hem. The idea was that you had to aid Santa’s safe passage above the rooftops, avoiding the chimney pots and storm clouds while collecting as many Christmas puds as possible. The person with the highest score would win a bottle of champers. Sounds simple enough but it required masterful mouse control and a lot of practice!

After a slow start, the leader board soon became full as the competition to win a bottle of champagne hotted up. Despite one early high scorer being top for a week ('SW'), the eventual winner came out of nowhere with an unbeatable score in the dying minutes of the 24th. Congratulations to ‘KG’ who was our winner with a staggering score of 26,548.

We have already had requests from our clients for more seasonal games so watch this space…

Susie

Accessibility for People with Learning Disabilities

Accessibility is designing products and services so it can be used by people with disabilities.

"Accessibility makes user interfaces perceivable, operable, and understandable by people with a wide range of abilities, and people in a wide range of circumstances, environments, and conditions."
- Shawn Lawton Henry

The above statement by accessibility expert Shawn Lawton Henry indicates accessibility is an extensive area of study and work for web design and development.

In May 2008, I was invited to attend a 2 day web accessibility workshop organized by the Inclusive New Media Design team. The INMD is a research project that aims to investigate best practices of accessible web design methods for people with learning disabilities.

The workshop participants were first introduced to the different types of intellectual disabilities, after that we looked at assistive technologies followed by testing with a group of users with learning disabilities.

Here are some of my observations and thoughts at the end of day 2 as we sat down to discuss our experiences.

• Disabled people feel connected using the web & technology. They feel they can be independent to a certain degree.
  
• The web can be a useful alternative channel for users with learning disabilities to attain information/news, entertainment, learn, and socialize.
  
• Many disabled participants who were testers had mobile phones, digital cameras, and email accounts.
  
• We generally think that web users with learning disabilities might seem like a minority group – think again! There are nearly 30million (14%) of UK population with a registered disability.
  
• There are varied types of learning disabilities, and there are different degrees of disabilities.
  
• Users with learning disabilities use technology the same way all other users do – in individually adapted ways. Users with same disability might use different modes & methods of access.
  
• Carrying out user testing with the target audience reveals invaluable insight to their real needs!
  
• Users with no access to the technology you design for, think about what other methods or channels you can reach them with?
  
• Web accessibility knowledge should be much more widely shared & practiced, not only within the web design & development circle, also to a wider public.
  

The audiences INMD look at in their research are a rather specific user group (with varied levels of learning disability – mild, moderate, severe, profound). When designing with these users in mind, we have to consider the below:

• Assistive technologies that users would employ to browse
  
  • screen readers, screen magnifiers, switches, concept keyboards, specialised pointing devices
    
  
  
• Structure & Navigation
  
  • different navigational methods for varying levels of disability – e.g. simplified, reduced nesting structure; 2 item choice based structure; linear structure
    
  
  
• Content
  
  
  
  • use of clear, simple, concise language
    
  • use of visuals/symbols as alternative to text
    
  • use clear concise headings
    
  • group text into blocks under each heading
    
  • use lists where appropriate
    
  • use descriptive link text
    
  • front load content
    
  
  
• Images
  
  
  
  • only use image where it is adding value to the content
    
  • alternative attributes should succinctly describe content of the image
    
  • if images are for decorative purposes, they should be coded in the cascading style sheets
    
  
  
• User testing
  
  
  
  • it is crucial when developing a website, as it makes a better web product when you are testing with real audience
    
  
  

You might be thinking... "what if I’m not designing for people with intellectual disabilities alone?". When designing for a wider audience, the accessibility concerns will need to cover the above considerations and also general user needs. The BBC websites have accessibility as their core design principal. Perhaps we can take a closer look and discuss in another post.

It would be good practice to have accessibility in mind when setting out planning a web project. It will make project planning a much thorough exercise, maximizing the usability outcome, and minimizing the possibility of usability failures during launch, thus giving it a better ROI.

June