Advanced Common Sense

I don’t know about you, but even though I enjoy watching some videos online, I almost always find them to be  t  o  o s  l  o   w.

I don't mind if a film noir from the 40's drags when I'm watching it on TV; that's part of the fun. But most webinars (frankly), and even things like TED talks (although I know it’s heresy to say it aloud) can seem to go on forever.

And as soon as my attention starts to wander, I start kidding myself that I can actually multitask, which amounts to a) opening up my inbox and working through some of the email languishing there while I half-listen, and b) gradually losing the thread of what the speaker is saying, which makes it seem even more boring. Eventually, I just close the video.

One problem is the inherent difference between print and video: You can skim print. In fact, we do it all the time. We're constantly adjusting our pace, all the way from "just glancing at the headings" to "rereading the same sentence until we finally understand it", with dozens of gradations in between. This flexibility lets us skip over (or at least breeze through) the parts that just aren't of much interest or value to us.

From my do-it-yourself usability testing forum:

“I've designed and facilitated a dozen or so tests on startup sites over the past couple of years but the last round I did was for a large publishing company and boy was I nervous.

The results were outstanding.

One forgets how bloody fantastic it is when that behemoth of an issue shows it's face for the first time... Priceless.”

pete_blatchford in Testing Success Stories