Today I had a revealing experience:
Watching the news on TV last night I saw a package about a speech made by a politician. What I saw was interesting and I thought I would like to watch the full speech. I figured it should be possible to find it on the web, but I couldn't bring myself to get off the sofa, turn on the computer, etc--besides, doing so would have been socially awkward as I was with other people. I said I would look it up the next day when I was in front of a computer.
Of course, when I arrived at work I totally forgot about this, and even if I had remembered I had other things to do. However, a few hours later I looked at my web browser, which has a news site as its home page. As I casually skimmed the headlines I saw something related to yesterday's speech. This made me remember my intention to watch it in full, and after a few clicks and entering some search terms I arrived at the right clip (as it turned out, I never had time to watch it in full).
This made me think a number of things:
- Broadcast TV served as a trigger for my later on-demand experience
- This trigger was not immediate. If watching the on-demand version had been an option without changing my physical and social engagement with TV, I might have chosen to do this; but it was not (and generally won't be for several years)
- My interest from last night did not translate into a determination to watch the clip today. Rather, I needed a further prod in the form of unexpected, serendipitous promotion in a portal
- Search only came into the picture once all of this had happened. By this time I not only knew that I was interested in the clip and that I would like to watch it at some point; when I entered the search terms I wanted to watch it right then (lesson: search only makes sense when you are ready to consume)
This pattern must be fairly common (and every day more so), and over time it will become a practice, much like today we say "after speaking to so-and-so I went and Googled him".
If true, this insight should be useful in designing on-demand media products. Some of the lessons are obvious:
- On-demand consumption doesn't happen in isolation and is part of larger media practices, in which traditional media play a promotional role.
- These promotions need to be followed up (or exploited) with further promotion within on-demand media (in which seeing, choosing, searching and consuming are only seconds away from each other), because users will rarely follow the link from one medium to the other intentionally and consciously.
- Timing is important: on-demand promotions need to be timed to appear prominently after their broadcast counterparts; but they must not happen too late either, as by then interest will have dwindled.
I have been writing for some time about the attitudes, moods and expectations that surround media consumption: sometimes users just know what they want; sometimes they stumble on a link; and sometimes just browsing is the main experience. The first mood --users with a clear idea of what they want-- cannot be treated in isolation. As I've argued before, a desire for a specific piece of content (say, a movie) is formed in a certain process in which media play a large role through promotion (word-of-mouth, culture, etc are also important).
I think that understanding these processes is key to forming a global picture of on-demand media consumption. Hopefully this post will shed some light on this.
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