Multi-Purposing Media to Serve Different Use Cases and Different Usability

The same video (actually, any media - what I'm describing could be done just as well with audio or cartoons) can be used in a variety of ways to suit different needs.

Note that I'm using the phrase multi-purposing, as distinct from repurposing, because this is not a situation where we took media from an old project and recycled it. The multiple uses I'm discussing here were planned, if not from the very start, certainly from an early point in the process of course development.

I recently completed a long-term project using archival and purpose-shot video to illustrate ongoing public health policy issues. The end product was, on the surface, a web-based page-turner course, and it continues to be referred to a a course, simply for convenience. It doesn't look like anything else as much as it looks like a standard online course.

Except that it isn't really a course. It has several intended use cases - and none using quizzes or other traditional assessments.

Here's what it is:

• It's a supplement to a traditional classroom course on policy and ethics
• It's a self-guided informational piece for anyone interested in those topics
• It's pre-reading (and viewing) to stimulate a flipped-classroom discussion environment

We started with archival recordings of a congressional hearing around the issues the course addresses (yes, we'll continue to call it that). It struck us early on that including current perspectives would be valuable and, as we had access to the majority of the witnesses from the original hearing, it would be feasible to do follow-up interviews. We did a round of interviews that tied the historical materiel into present-day viewpoints on the same issues. Each set of video clips was followed by un-scored questions, intended to prompt both reflection on the part of the individual student and to stimulate discussion in a classroom environment.

Conventional wisdom on using video effectively in online courseware is that it's best to present it in short segments. Only about five minutes at a time, tops. We've all suffered through endless lectures that were presented under the guise of a webinar. We determined that we would present a single idea at a time, with short statements from one or just a few speakers, supported as appropriate with related content.

But, when you interview experts, you will come away with far more than a few minutes on each topic.. And that was the case here. When we completed the "Perspectives" lesson we found we had hours of relevant, good, material that just would not fit into the course.

What to do with this valuable material?

We decided that we would use the interviews to produce a short documentary. The film would support the course and raise the profile of the issues. The course would support the film, in that participants in the course would be likely to go to it for more in-depth information from the expert interviews, 

Each product can function as a standalone, and each can be used to supplement other educational activities. 

A short film can go places that a course never would. To see if the film was a successful effort on its own, we submitted it to several documentary-focused film festivals - and received an award. IN the academic/policy world, it's been accepted as a conference presentation.

The course, apart from the film, has been reviewed by university instructors and public health policy people. Also getting high marks for being engaging and useful. 

What does this have to do with the "usability" focus of this blog?

Every form of media has different usability. A video can "work" in a situation or a context where a course wouldn't . Similarly for a book (or a podcast, or a song, or a game). In this case, we started from the same raw content, and developed two distinctly different, successful products.

If you've ever read Marshall McLuhan, you can see how this way of looking at different presentation modalities is in line with what he said about pre-web media forms.

We wanted our content to reach casual users as well as formal ones. We needed to serve professional workers in policy and public health, as well as university professors and their students.

Watching a short documentary is an easy investment of time for someone who can't take a course over many hours or days. The course-that-is-not-a-course (with or without the short doc) is easily used by an instructor as a supplement to a formal curriculum. It's like an assigned reading. Either or both is accessible for someone who is interested in the subject, but can't commit to signing up for  a class.

Another way to look at it is: we already had the noodles, so we used them as an entree on Monday and as a side dish on Tuesday.

If you can think ahead to where, and how, and to whom, you want your content to be delivered, considering more than one modality (using the same content) may be the key to reaching a broader audience.

Links to the materials discussed will follow - the products were not opened for wide release as of this writing.

Usability of Usability Infographics

For anything to be usable (not the same as useful, but not unrelated) it has to be fairly easy. Your reception of it should be natural and intuitive. Any barrier to your easy acceptance will slow or stop your interaction with the content.

And (despite years of hearing 'content is king') that means the use case is as important as the nature of the content when making design decisions.

Infographics aim to tell you or teach you or make you think about something in an easy, natural way. You just look at a picture, instead of reading or listening or working through problems or pages.

This is a nice "hundred years of usability" piece from people that know a lot about the subject. I only have one issue with it. It's horizontal.  Which works if you're getting it as a physical poster (and they have a link to purchase one). And I think the physical poster  would be a great addition to office space or a classroom.

Horizontal infographic from www.measuringusability.com

 But to view it onscreen a vertical orientation works better. That goes for any screen -- landscape or portrait, you would still move through it in an up - down path more naturally.  We expect to scroll down, but scrolling sideways is more of an effort.

Here's one (similar style, from the same site) that works better onscreen.  Because it's vertical.

Vertical infographic from www.measuringusability.com

What's my point? 

Usability starts with a use case. If your user is being encouraged to hang something on his wall, that suggests one way to design the product. If the expectation is that they'll view it on a monitor or phone or tablet - that's another.

Content may well be king, but the use case is the power behind the throne.

Mobile Learning Infographic

Why Mobile Learning Is The Future Of Workplace Learning


Click to view the complete infographic. | Infographic by Upside Learning

Form and Function

Form has to support and follow function. Pretty things that don't work...don't work.

The image posted below - I still see it as taking an elegant shot at  integrating aesthetics with accessibility -  drew a Facebook comment from Jonathan David Post, and he's right.

And Mr. Post's comment:
"This is a cool solution visually but maybe not the most functional. A few problems: Too steep. Too long. No railing (If you slip what happens? Tumble to your death?). What if there's a crowd of people going up/down? Roll through them?

My mother's been disabled my whole life so I tend to notice poorly designed ramps and doors..."

The original image came from DoSomething's page, the post was on October 4, and you can read more good comments, both supportive and critical, there.

Just goes to show - there's always more to think about.

Design for Mobile First

Think of users working from their phones or tablets. The point is to keep to simple. But I don't think I'd agree with  the title of this piece from Slate. You have to know you'll be scaling to the desktop, too.

Forget the Desktop

"This isn’t a radical proposal. Many Web designers build their sites according to this principle—Jason Kottke and John Gruber’s blogs were designed for desktop browsers, but because they load quickly and aren’t cluttered by extraneous elements, they look like they were built with mobile devices in mind."

Who Do You Think You're Talking To?

It's an important thing to know.

Not only in terms of your style, but in terms of your UI choices.

Let's say you're expecting users to access your content with a phone.

If your target audience includes people over 40, small print (like the login agreement you see when you use free wifi at Starbucks) will create a minor roadblock.

Let's say a fair percentage of your audience may be over 60. If they're logging in with an iPhone, the finger-spread gesture to expand the login so they can read it and tap the button may present a greater roadblock.

Present enough roadblocks, and they'll go somewhere else.

Try walking in their shoes, sure. But also try seeing through their eyes and multitouching with their fingers.

Do you need a use case or a target audience?

Do you need a use case or a target audience?

A use case means considering how your product will be used by a hypothetical individual who represents a part of your user base - for example, a tech-savvy 35-year-old project manager who is eager to do all her administrative reports in a shared web-based environment instead of working in Microsoft Word and sending the reports as email attachments (note that the use case may be more or less specific). If you're building a product to serve this person, you've got some specifics to work with regarding probable expectations, the amount of guidance and hand-holding needed, and so on. By developing additional use cases describing other probable users (and these are developed by talking with the client - you may even have access to the users themselves) you will have done the groundwork for making a design that suits the users. A target audience is more of a passive recipient, not a true user. "Anyone working in acquisitions" for example. Without a real understanding of the users, the product will be generic and bland. You'll be doing the least you can - putting the product out there in another gray blob among thousands of gray blobs that meet the requirements but are ultimately forgettable. Understanding the difference between a user and an audience is important - are you showing them something or are they doing something?

This distinction is not unique to the web - a hands-on constructivist learning product based on paper or in the classroom can just as easily be dulled into a passive presentation, but web- based products provide constant opportunities to make the choice whether to lecture or to engage. Can the user get in there and really use it -whatever it is - without being told at length what it is, what to do, and how to do it? Less telling the user about the product and more of the user using the product is the goal.

Graceful Degradation

Graceful degradation - the ability of your product to function reasonably well when presented under less than optimal conditions - should be on your mind with everything you design.

Try to avoid it in marketing efforts, job interviews, and internal staff evaluations.

Usable or Secure?

Overcomplicating things can cost serious money.

By going all-out for security and designing $100 bills thought to be nearly impossible to counterfeit, Uncle Sam succeeded in designing $100 bills that the Treasury found nearly impossible to print.

"...the quarantined bills add up to $110 billion -- more than 10 percent of the entire U.S. cash supply, which now stands at around $930 billion.

The flawed bills, which cost around $120 million to print, will have to be burned." -- From Zachary Ross's piece on Yahoo - http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20101206/us_yblog_thelookout/government-cant-print-money-properly.

Given that there is no plan to retire the existing $100 dollar bills, the level of protection this debacle was intended to provide for the US money supply is debatable. And it's doubtful anyone would argue that any currency is impossible to counterfeit. The counterfeiters may well have an easier time developing these superfranklins than the Mint.

The security consultants should have made room at the table for someone with a usability background - or someone with hands-on knowledge of printing currency.

As Franklin himself is so often quoted (paraphrased, really) - "He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither."

He who trades a usable product for a secure one will have neither.

Franklin's original quote, in the interest of completeness, is: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Mental Models

"Because designers know too much, they form wonderful mental models of their own creations, leading them to believe that each feature is easy to understand." - Jakob Nielsen, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mental-models.html

Communicate

Remember that you're trying to communicate with an actual person. You're not trying to please a stuffy old English professor.

Stop Sign Redesign

www.glumbert.com/media/stopsigndesign

A classic look at complicating something simple. Thank you, organizational mentality.

Here's the low-res embedded Youtube video (if you don't want to go to a new tab).

Sometimes...

...you need a use case, not a target audience.