Proactive Choices: Helping the Audience Navigate the Complex Content Landscape
Picture yourself during a lazy Saturday afternoon. As you’re tucked in your cozy couch, you’re determined to liberate yourself from boredom by figuring which satisfying piece of entertainment to consume. Your television has yet to be turned on, laptop hooked up on the side, with Netflix and YouTube cued up on the browser.
Netflix seems like the easy choice for you at first, but after a few minutes of browsing you realize that there’s an unnerving list of movies and TV shows on the “Continue Watching” menu. As much as you hate the lingering feeling of unfinished tasks, you figured that today you want to see something either fresh or something you haven’t seen in a long time. So your attention turns to that cable box on standby mode below the TV and a neatly arrange rack of BluRay movies, both slowly gathering dust from minimal use.
The proverbial “meh” pops into your inner monologue, as in a matter of seconds you’re overwhelmed by picturing yourself in many multiple scenarios of you delving into each and every possible entertainment choice from the multitude of options presented to you.
So instead, you turn to your trusty mobile phone, and decide to scroll through your Facebook newsfeed. And after about half an hour of Buzzfeed listicles, baby photos and viral videos of people getting hit at the midsection, you put your phone down and you blankly stare at the deep black void that is your widescreen TV, thinking to yourself: “Well, that didn’t go anywhere”.
Okay, so that scenario was really just about MY frustrating Saturday afternoons. But I’m sure to varying degrees, most of you have experienced some kind “analysis paralysis” in this increasingly complex landscape of home entertainment, especially for you older Millenials and young Gen X’ers who actually remember a time when you lavished in the relatively fewer choices restricted to a few dozen channels on television.
As we all know, since the mass proliferation of video content in an online world that’s getting more sophisticated and easier to access, the landscape of entertainment choices has exponentially increased from just the typical long-form movies and TV programming, to include a more vast variety of short-form content, from the ones that are professionally produced in a studio, to the ones that are shot by your everyday amateurs using their mobile phones.
On top of that, the plethora of platforms where content can be accessed has also become much more complex and fragmented.
The truth is there is too much of stuff out there to watch and so many ways to access them, that audiences are barely keeping up.
There were around 400 original scripted television series and over 100 American movies released in the United States in 2015 alone. That doesn’t include TV programming and cinema made elsewhere in the world, noting that thousands upon thousands are produced annually in huge entertainment markets such as China, India, the rest of Asia and Europe.
What’s more, the key digital platforms have been adding to the overall clutter of video entertainment. As of 2015, YouTube claims around 400 hours of video are uploaded in their platform every minute, while Facebook has been catching up in the past couple of years with its aggressive push for both pre-produced and live video.
With the exponentially growing amount of content available to us, we really are in the age of the long tail: the idea that the presence of niche content is not just increasing in number, but also in popularity. And that tail is getting even taller and longer with the increasing fragmentation of viewer preferences, especially because the audience now has even more power now to determine the popularity of content and determine the types of entertainment to be made.
A well-known psychologist and popular TED speaker Barry Schwartz is a proponent of the idea that more choice doesn’t necessary mean more fulfillment. He argues that too much choice produces paralysis that’s pretty much like the scenario I outlined at the beginning of this post. And even if we overcome this paralysis, we still might end up less satisfied, as it has become much easier to imagine alternative consequences from being presented with so many options.
Schwartz’s “Paradox of Choice” is even more pronounced in recent modern times. We now live in a hyper-connected world filled with always-mobile users in constant Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), whose idea of “entertaining content” is much more broadly defined outside the usual fare of professionally produced programming.
Since we consume so much of a diverse assortment of content on a daily basis, I can’t help but think that many people are starting to feel much less satisfied with their viewing choices. But whether we like it or not, this is the inevitable reality of the media landscape: way more stuff (both the good and the bad) and more places to watch them on.
SOME THOUGHT STARTERS
So how can content creators and distributors keep their audiences from going insane from this continuing complexity?
First, get back to the basics and ask yourselves: What do people want when watching entertaining content?
1. They want to see something that will amuse / inform / inspire them
2. They want to get to being amused / informed / inspired as soon as humanly possible
3. They want to maximize being amused / informed / inspired at the moment that they’re watching
The first point is often already met with the consistent inflow of numerous “good” content, hence I will not be addressing quality. However, there’s a lot that could be done to address the second and third points.
How? The key is for consumers to be empowered to make choices that they will feel good about, by helping them navigate through the complex landscape of content platforms, give them the tools to make those decisions quickly, and make sure they can understand the consequences of their choices as much as possible even before they press “play”.
Here are some thought starters on what could be done, coupled with examples (some you might find absurd, but hopefully they hammer in my points):
1. Make your content accessible and let people know where to watch them
A no brainer, but content creators often tend to overlook this. With all the entertainment options being constantly pushed out to users across multiple platforms, it’s all about grabbing the attention of the right user at the right time. Moreover, once you have their attention, it’s also important to let them know where they can access your content in all its forms.
Take Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” for example. As a loyal fan of the program, I am already aware that I can watch full episodes on TV and on the web. But what I didn’t know was that there’s so much other content around the show that I can access across other online platforms.
Comedy Central’s Facebook page and the show’s YouTube page already has wealth of content around the program, and given that the format has been around for over a decade, I was only aware of this just last year.
It would have been helpful if I just saw a page or a graphic that outlines what’s out there and where to watch it.
While content discovery can be an enjoyable process, at times it does get tedious. Why not just cut to the chase and tell people where your stuff is at?
2. Make them understand the “time cost” of picking the content
The TV networks and the major digital content platforms are already doing this by clearly outlining programming time slots and video durations, and even the number of seasons and episodes. This is very important, as whether you’re conscious about it or not, a piece of content’s duration significantly factors into our choices.
But what about the opportunity cost of consuming a piece of content? While it’s great that digital platforms typically serve video recommendations based on topical relevance or a user’s interests, it would be interesting to see an added layer of suggestions also based on durations.
If possible, It might even be interesting to see if you put this into context of a day-to-day activity, which is categorized based on time of day or location of your mobile device.
Could be a lot less creepier. But it’s definitely an interesting function.
3. Make them understand the quality of that choice
Nothing causes more frustration in consuming content that realizing, after a significant amount of time watching, that it’s crap. While a lot of people, including myself, tend to commit once they’ve started, a lot of time can be saved if users know what they’re getting themselves into.
The user ratings and algorithmic recommendations based on user interests and behavior we already see on platforms such as Netflix and YouTube have been great in serving users what they want, at least what the machine “thinks” they want. But viewers don’t always decide on cold rationale or based on neatly categorized channels and genres.
Emotions often play a role in a user’s content choices. So while we wait for technology to properly quantify the complexities of human feelings, why not start with “mood categories”? Could be as basic as “happy”, “sad”, “angry”, “bittersweet” and so on. And eventually, as the algorithm learns over time, it could get as complex as the below example:
4. (For big format shows with huge armies of passionate fans) Actively promote the user-generated content related yours
Even great shows are only as good as the fans that rabidly talk about them. Pay tribute to die hard fans and let the rest of the audience know that there’s a lot of good stuff out there about your show.
Game of Thrones is a fantastic example. Apart from being a great show in itself, it has such a passionate fan base that a lot of fan content gets created on a very regular basis, from episode recaps / reviews, to fan theories, to even fan art.
In fact, I really do think this format in itself has it’s own robust ecosystem that viewers who are generally unaware of this can actually have a more enriching experience with the show by watching the supplementary stuff. Imagine is someone collated all this, that’ll make GOT nerds’ lives much easier.
5. Offer a (drastically) alternate option — It’s all well and good that we get recommendations based on the things that algorithms “think” we’re interested in. But this pretty much isolates everything else that’s not covered, which restricts you from seeing what else is out there.
You might be an Action / Adventure / Sci-Fi / Fantasy type of guy, but you’ll never know if a good Drama or RomCom might give you just as much viewing pleasure if the platform doesn’t even recommend it to you more directly.
YouTube also seems to be focused too much on giving you recommendations based on your past consumption. It should also push out more videos that are trending, but not necessarily related to what the user has watched in the past.
Pushing such types of content can make viewers have a wider, more well-rounded perception of what is else is out there.
6. Finally, empower them to regulate their consumption
The internet economy has generally been focused on quantity: the more users, the more views, and the more time spent on a platform is understandably good for business. However, this creates a mindset of thoughtless consumption driven by an endless need to be distracted at all times of the day, which invariably leads to loss of productivity in their professional lives, and/or loss of quality time spent with the things and people that matter to them most in their personal lives.
As much as you want to keep your viewers watching your stuff as much as possible, I theorize that empowering them to actually TURN OFF when they feel need to could actually motivate them to GO BACK ON and spend a set amount of QUALITY VIEWING TIME on your platforms.
Imagine mechanisms that give users options to schedule their viewing times, allowing them to proactively plan their daily routines so that they themselves can eventually learn to manage a healthy balance of living inside and outside of their screens.
While the above suggestions are meant to be thought starters that can be further refined by more qualified people in the field of user experience design, the essential aim here is to make the audience’s lives easier by:
- Helping them sift through their content options more efficiently through interfaces and algorithms that are driven by real human needs
- Reduce their pervading inclinations towards Fear of Missing Out by making content choices easily available, making them more confident about the choices that they’ve made.
- Allowing them to set their own boundaries, enabling them to have a more meaningful relationship with what they consume…as well as their lives outside their screens.
IN CLOSING
To some degree, I do agree with Schwartz’s argument about the “Paradox of Choice”, that too much choice isn’t necessarily good for us. But the reality is more choice is ultimately good for the entertainment industry as a whole. As viewer preferences have become more and more complex and fragmented, content creators and distributors have responded in turn by addressing this infinitely diverse set of wants. This eventually leads to more innovation, as creators scramble to make the best content that fits their niche audiences.
Now, content itself is just one piece of the equation. Distribution is just as important, particularly since technology nowadays has made proliferation of such content much easier and smarter. But what comes from this ease of access also results to an apparent change in viewer habits, who have become more voracious, distracted and even confused in their complex media-consuming existence. If left unchecked, this may eventually lead to lives that are less fulfilled and less meaningful.
This is where technology in its endless possibilities can help the media-hungry audience empower themselves to make proactive and balanced content options by intuitively designing mechanisms for choice-making around users’ day-to-day human lives.
