Why is online video so compelling compared to text?
I’ve been in my video studio working on my new online video course (Designing For Engagement). It’s a lot of work to create my online video courses (through Udemy.com), but it’s also fun to work on them, and it’s exciting to have people taking and enjoying the courses.
It got me thinking again, about why online video is so compelling as a medium, and so while I was in the studio I made this short video “4 Reasons Why Online Video Is Persuasive”:
Here are the 4 reasons:
#1: The Fusiform Facial area makes us pay attention to faces
#2: Voice conveys rich information
#3: Emotions are contagious
#4: Movement grabs attention
What do you think? Do you find online video more engaging than reading text? Why do you think it is (or isn’t)?
I usually don’t watch videos because I like peace and quiet. Sometimes I watch them long enough to get the gist of what they’re about and then stop them. Short is best!
I very rarely view videos on the web, for a number of simple reasons:
* Viewing a video takes too long time, compared to reading a text. I can speed read a text, skimming, skipping paragraphs, in order to find out if I want to read it more closely. I can’t do that with a video.
* I find it easier to concentrate on a text as reading is acting, while viewing a video or listening to audio is passive.
* Most of the web (well, the parts that I come across) is in english, which is not my native language. I read fluently, but sometimes miss out words in spoken english, not the least as my hearing isn’t that acute.
So, for me, text and images rule, I mostly ignore video and audio.
Videos are of no use to millions of deaf and hard of hearing people if they are not captioned. Auto captions are not of acceptable quality and need to be cleaned up to include proper punctuation, speaker identificaitons, sound descriptions, etc.
Please read more about the importance of captioning as universal access on my website – http://www.audio-accessibility.com.
Susan – videos mean nothing to millions of deaf and hard of hearing people if they are not accessible via quality captions. Auto captions are not of acceptable quality – quality captions are as important (with proper punctuation, speaker identificaitons, sound descriptions, etc.) as quality speech. Would you please make all of your videos accessible via captions? Thanks!
Video is more risky than text.
I don’t know what I’ll get when I click a video. Pre-roll ad? Rambling nonsense? Bandwidth drought wait.
So I inevitably look at text.
So for example instead of spending 5 minutes watching the above video I simply spent 5 seconds reading the bottom four points, then googled Fusiform Facial and spent another 20 seconds assessing its relevance.
I rest my case.
Totally agree with you, Frank. That’s the reason why it’s required that videos have both captions and a HTML transcript below it – there are millions of deaf/hoh people who cannot hear audio and also there are many people who prefer to skim text than listen to audio all way (due to various reasons including but not limited to the bandwidth issue you mentioned).