Posts tagged with 'Online video'

2nd leaders’ debate - rating the leaders’ performances

By Abid Warsi on 23 April 2010

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Last week I watched the election on my laptop to experience Social TV. The most interesting aspect was seeing how viewers’ ratings of the leaders changed throughout the debate. This week, I looked at the different ways in which websites or TV channels displayed viewers’ ratings to see which worked best.

Guardian’s Reaction tracker

The Guardian had a clear chart with a line for each of the leaders. However, it only updated once every minute. This wasn’t frequent enough for it to enhance the live viewing experience. When Gordon Brown told Nick Clegg to ‘Get real’ I wanted to know straight away what the viewers thought about it. But, by the time the chart updated the debate had moved on.

Sky TV’s bar chart

Sky TV’s bar chart tried to show the breadth of opinions. For example, they didn’t just show the average rating for Nick Clegg. Instead Sky showed how far the ratings from most people ranged for Nick Clegg. So, the more the ratings differed the taller the yellow bar would be. This added a different dimension to how the ratings were displayed. However, it was a little more complicated and harder to interpret than the Guardian’s simple line chart. Also, the bar didn’t seem to move that much and you had to look carefully to notice any movement.  Most of the time I wanted to look at the leaders themselves so I often missed changes in the ratings.

ITV’s Worm

I wrote about this last week. It showed whether viewers felt positively or negatively towards what the leaders were saying. A single line went up or down in reaction to what the leaders were saying. There were 2 great things about this. Firstly, the line moved instantly in reaction to what was being said, giving immediate reactions. Secondly, the scale was set just right so that when viewers liked/disliked a leader’s comments the line rose/dropped markedly, these made the changes look and feel more dramatic. Out of the 3 displays ITV’s Worm was the best to watch.

Viewer ratings can really add to the experience of watching a debate. I can see these becoming more common in Social TV. It’s important to consider the best way to display the ratings. They should grab the viewer’s attention by making changes noticeable and easy to interpret.

This ends a politically themed week here at Webcredible. See how we rated the websites of the UK political parties in a report we launched earlier this week.

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Election leaders debate - a social TV experience

By Abid Warsi on 16 April 2010

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Many people in the UK had a social TV experience tonight, watching the leaders debate while also commenting on facebook, twitter and chat rooms. Social TV is slowly getting more popular, especially at big events like this. I had my first social TV experience tonight. I had my laptop open on ITV’s website where there was a live video of the debate, a chat room, a facebook window, a live ‘Worm’ graph and instant polls.

Chat room & facebookfacebook connect chat widget

There was a live ITV chat room where viewers were giving instant reactions. It was interesting to see what other viewers thought of what the leaders said and to see a big range of viewer opinions. It was also good to see that most viewers didn’t stick to part lines and but gave genuine comments, criticising their favourite leader and complimenting the opposition where appropriate.

The ITV website also had a facebook window which showed comments made by facebook users. This had the potential to be more interesting than the public chat room - I was more interested in knowing the opinions of my friends than those of strangers.

However, the facebook window showed comments from any facebook user on the ITV website and any comments from my friends were lost amongst these. I’d have preferred a more personal experience within a smaller social group.

Worm

ITV worm chartFor me, the most captivating example of social TV came from the ‘Worm’. ITV added a live graph line, called a ‘Worm’, on top of a live video of the debate. This continuously showed how much a select group of 20 viewers felt positively or negatively towards what the leaders were saying (they were provided a special device to do this).

The ‘Worm’ was the easiest element of social TV to follow. Firstly, I didn’t need to look away from the leaders to know what other viewers thought. Secondly, I could understand how other people felt much faster by looking at the ‘Worm’ line than by reading through comments.

The ‘Worm’ concept could be improved. 20 users is very small sample size and a much larger sample would give a more reliable representation of public feelings. For example, an interface could be built into the website to allow all viewers give their feelings.

Live poll

Finally, ITV took polls on its website throughout the debate and showed the results changing from minute to minute. It was exciting to get an early view of what the major opinion polls would eventually show after the debate. It was also an effective way to get viewers to contribute to the social TV element - it made it very quick and easy to share your opinion.

Overall experience

Taking part in social TV added a new and exciting dimension to the viewing experience. It’ll be interesting to see how social TV develops as an increasing number of people watch TV while also browsing the Internet on their laptops, netbooks, iPads, mobile phones… I’d recommend trying out the social TV experience at the next leaders debate or big sporting event.

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SeeSaw launches new online TV service

By Abid Warsi on 17 February 2010

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SeeSaw has just launched its TV service bringing together recent and archive TV programmes from the BBC, Channel 4 and Five. It bought its technology from Project Kangaroo, which was joint venture by the same broadcasters that the Competition Commission blocked. Now that this service has finally arrived will it succeed?

3 channels in 1 place

Bringing programmes from different broadcasters into a single place has been popular elsewhere. Hulu did this in the USA where it offers programmes from NBC, Fox and ABC, amongst others, and has been very successful. For users it’s convenient to have all the programmes they want to watch all in one place and it encourages them to browse around and find various programmes, just as they do on their living room TVs. However, UK broadcasters already have their own successful catch up servies so SeeSaw will need promote itself heavily and attract users to its website.

SeeSaw will contain thousands of hours of archive programmes and this may help it to attract users. However, it’s not clear from its homepage that it contains a large amount of archive footage. It should make its proposition clear in its marketing material and on its homepage.

Living room

Most users will still prefer to watch programmes on their living room TVs rather than on their PC monitors. Living rooms are used for socialising and large TVs work much better PCs in this environment. If SeeSaw found a way to integrate its service into TV sets, set-top boxes or gaming consoles then it could get head of the competition. Netflix has does this quite successfully with its own streaming service in the USA and SeeSaw could benefit from doing something similar.

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Accessible video and audio

By Trenton Moss on 30 September 2009

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We published a top tip in last month’s newsletter on how to go about ensuring you have accessible video and audio on your website, so I thought I’d put my thoughts up on the blog as well.

Accessibility isn’t just limited to the text on your website - it applies to all types of content including multimedia. With video and audio becoming more and more common across the web it’s essential that you do as much as possible to open up this content to all website users, and it’s not as complicated as you may think.  Below are some tips for catering for three key user groups:

Blind web users
The key requirement for blind web users for accessible video is that all visual changes within videos are conveyed through non-visual means. Ideally this would be though an additional voice-over within the video (which can be switched on or off) describing the visual changes. Creating this for all your videos can be very costly and time-consuming, so an alternative is to provide a written transcript for the video, with a comprehensive description of the video. Also, ensure that video and audio don’t automatically play on web pages as the sound can interfere with screen reader speech.
Mobility-impaired web users
For most mobility-impaired users, effective keyboard access to content is key to offering accessible video and audio. All audio/video controls need to work with the keyboard as well as the mouse and the tabbing order through these controls should be logical (which usually means left-to-right). Finally, there should be a focus state for each control when tabbed onto – often this is a yellow border around the control so it’s probably best to follow this convention. Do also bear in mind that blind users utilising screen readers are also keyboard-only users so these guidelines also apply to them.
Deaf web users
For deaf web users the most important thing when making accessible video and audio is that equivalents are provided for all content that relies on sound. This means offering written transcripts for audio files and subtitles within videos (which can be switched on or off). Ideally, and for optimal accessibility, you’ll also provide sign language for any videos as this is the first language for many hearing impaired people (especially those deaf since birth).

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Using videos on your product pages - a good idea?

By Ismail Ismail on 10 September 2009

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IMRG logoJon and I attended the IMRG workshop on interactive marketing yesterday. We really enjoyed the session and like all IMRG events we met some great new people there, as well as old friends.

One particularly interesting topic of discussion was on the use of digital video as part of the online retail experience. There were good points made by a number of delegates about how video can support brand building and marketing efforts as part of an interactive campaign. I’ve previously blogged about video content on YouTube so I won’t make that point here.

Video content production can be an expensive business so if you’re seriously considering putting video into your retail journey you need to be sure it’s going to give you the return you need.

So, under what circumstances is it optimal to support your customers with video?

In my opinion the best way to work out where in the journey your videos should sit is by examining your customers’ decision-making and discovery process across multiple channels. Videos could be used to provide rich insights at the point when people are scouting around looking at competitior products, trying to understand what features and capabilities they’d like in their new purchase. The kind of product videos that add a great deal of value are the ones that really use the medium to full effect.

For example, videos of expensive, technical products could support customers to answer some preliminary questions about the tactile qualities or usability of a product such as a mobile handset or a digital camera. Apple successfully (and some might say controversially) used product videos of their iPhone across multiple channels to educate would be customers about the user experience of their product. So, there’s a good chance that customers will be visiting your bricks and mortar store to get a feel for the product for themselves and seek some expert advice from your staff. But if you’re a pureplay digital e-tailer then this might not be possible.

So, given the cost involved in producing high quality videos how would you decide which products are worth investing in?

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