-------- Messaggio originale --------
Oggetto: Let Our Video Go
Data: Wed, 07 May 2014 15:24:09 +0000
Mittente: <Roger Macdonald>
Let Our Video Go
MetMuseunScroll_DT11631
<http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/548344?img=3>UI
/ UX Advances in Freeing Information Enslaved by an Ancient Egyptian
Model Or… Why Video Scrolling is so Last Millenniums
In creating an open digital research library of television news
<https://archive.org/details/tv>, we have been challenged by being
unable to reference a current user experience model for searching video.
Conventional video search requires users to start at the beginning of
video and proceed at the pace and sequencing dictated by content
creators. Our service has vaulted over the confines of the linear video
storytelling framework by helping users jump into content at points
directly pertaining to their search. But by doing so, we have left some
of our prospective users adrift, without a conceptual template to rely
on. That is until this April, with the release of a new user interface.
GutenbergPress_LoC <http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2006690328/>
Treating video as infinitely addressable data is enabling us to do an
increasingly better job at getting researchers right to their points of
interest. While revolutionary, applied at the scale we do with
television news, it has an antecedent in a prior media revolution: the
transition from the age of scrolls to printed books. Gutenberg used
movable type to print identical bibles in the mid-1400′s. It took a
hundred more years before detailed indexes started appearing at the end
of books. The repurposing of closed captioning to facilitate deep search
of video is, in some ways, as significant for television as the
evolution from parchment and papyrus rolls to books with page numbers
and indexes.
The value of most major innovations can only be realized when people
adapt their conceptual models to understand and use them. Our interface
design challenge included helping users make a perceptual leap from a
video experience akin to ancient Egyptians unfurling scrolls to that of
library-literate modern readers, or the even more recent experience of
being able to find specific Web “pages” via search engines.
SprocketScroll
<http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/547790?img=1>
Our latest interface version helps users cross the cognitive bridge from
video “scrolls” to understanding television programs viewed at the
Internet Archive are like digitally indexed “books,” comprised of
60-second segments. We convey this, in part, by joining the video
segments with filmstrip sprocket border graphics. Linear, like film, but
also “paginated” for leaping from one search-related segment to another.
ScreenShot3
<https://archive.org/details/ALJAZAM_20131204_080000_News?q=indonesia+summit#start/1397/end/1457>
When searching inside individual broadcasts, the new interface
reinforces that metaphor of content hopping by truncating presentation
of interleaving media irrelevant to the search query. We present the
search-relevant video segments, while still conveying the relative
“distance” between each jump — again referencing the linear “scroll”
experience that most have not yet learned to abandon.
ScreenShot4
<http://blog.archive.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ScreenShot4.jpg>
The new UI has another revolutionary aspect that also hearkens back to
one of the great byproducts of the library index model: serendipitous
discovery of adjacent knowledge. Dan Cohen, founding Executive Director
of the Digital Public Library of America recently recounted
<http://dp.la/info/2014/02/07/planning-for-serendipity/>, “I know a
professor who was hit on the head by a book falling off a shelf as he
reached for a different one; that book ended up being a key part of his
future work.”
Segments <http://blog.archive.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Segments.jpg>
When using the new “search within” a single program feature, the browser
dynamically refines the results with each character typed. Unexpected
60-second segments and phrases arise, providing serendipitous choices as
typing proceeds, while options narrow towards the intended results.
These unanticipated, yet systematic, occurrences suggest the diverse
opportunities for inquiry afforded by the unique research library and
encourage some playful exploration.
Carter_10
<http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/gallery/p0642.html>The Internet
Archive is still in the early stages of helping guide online television
out of its imprisonment in ancient conceptual frameworks. A bright
future awaits knowledge seekers and content creators alike when digital
video is optimized for systematic discovery of even short segments. New
audiences and new use-cases will be joined with media that has been
languishing for too long in digital tombs, mostly unseen and unheard.
At its heart, the Internet Archive is an invitation to explore and
collaborate. Please, join us in evolving digital opportunities to open
knowledge for the benefit of all.
Start by giving our service a whirl, find something important and quote
it. I just did -
https://twitter.com/r_macdonald/status/463492832867516416