if viewers can’t find it»

part one:

research by design

«It’s no point havingfabulous content

Designing a digital platform for visualizing half a century of archived NRK productions.

Eirik Haugen Murvold

The Oslo School of Architecture and DesignThe Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation

The content consists, as of this specific point in time, of 24.053 titles. However, new titles are added to the content monthly, so it’s rapidly growing in size and complexity.

This phase of the project was to strengthen my understanding of what the archive actually has to offer – from what year are the productions and what are the best way to categorize them? Hence, uncovering an existing framework of the content.

Mapping the content

The existing service

The page where all archived content is posted. The structure of the page shows content listed by the month it was posted and then alphabetically within that month.

The main video streaming offering of NRK – their “home page”, if you’re not counting nrk.no. Shows the newest, most popular and recommended videos that NRK offers – hence, nothing archived.

All videos categorized within their individual categories. However, as this page only shows new, popular and recommended videos, no archived content will ever appear here.

One can do a point seacrh for specific titles. However, this means that you need to know what you are looking for, and you’ll rarely discover titles you didn’t know you were looking for.

arkivpublisering.nrk.no

tv.nrk.no Kategorier [anbefalt]

Search

If one moves from the recommended section to the alphabetical A–Å listing, all archived content will be listed there. However, still pretty hard to comprehend the information.

All roads lead to Rome. No matter which way you chose to find the content, either archived or un-archived content, this is where you’ll end up – in the main media player.

The search results are listed by relevance and you can follow the one you’re looking for. Again, you will rarely discover titles you didn’t know you were looking for.

Kategorier [A – Å] Media player

Search results

The system I’m woring with consists of 24.053 individual videos ranging in production year from 1959 to 2014. The system is expanding gradually as more titles are digitalized and added to the archive monthly. To the right the titles have been visualized by production year. As the archive is still growing, we can expect the distribution to become a more even variation of what can be seen here, but as of now this is the distribution.

The system

6059 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 11 12 13 1470 80 90 00 10

Twenty years with little material due to the time it takes to digitalize analog videos, but also due to less being produced compared to today’s situation.

Almost twenty years of little material due to lacking agreements with the productions .

Fifteen years of accessible material due to a complete digitalization process and agreements with the productions.

1959 – 1980

1997 – 2014

1981 – 1996

All relevant titles merged together into series and seasons, and then printed out on A4 sheets.

The titles I knew or which ones were obvious what category they were classified as were cut out.

Underholdning Thriller DramaHumor Norge Nyheter Musikk Kultur BarnSport

Magasin Kjøkken Fakta Portrett Monarkiet Politikk Høytid Livssyn Hjem og hage Helse

All titles merged into categories and then clustering all the categories together with each other.

Culture

Fact

Portrait

Monarcy

Politics EntertainmentMusic Humour

Kitchen

Kids

Norway Televisionmagazine

ReligionHolidays

Home and garden

Health

News

Sports

Drama

Crime

The process of gaining insight into what the archive actually was made up of was very valuable, but also long and complex. It started out by getting a complete list of the 24 053 titles that the archive consisted of, varying in production date from all the way back to 1959 up to 2014. This complete list listed all content by individial episodes, not by complete seasons, so the fist step was to cluster all episodes that belonged together into complete seasons and series.

With this list of all content, it still made up thirty A4 sheets with font size six, which then all were printed out. Since the amount of titles was still vast, the only rule I followed when choosing what selection to sort within different categories was to pick only the material I already knew what category they belonged in or the ones that was obvious what category they belonged in – usually made obvious by their name.

So I still cut out about one third of all the content of the archive, which I would say is a representative selection out of 24 053 titles. The cut-outs were then clustered together into different categories that fit them the best.

As one can see to the left, there is a lot of music related videos in the archive – concerts, entertainment and documentaries. The other big cluster is entertainment with a lot of varité shows. There is not much sports and news related videos, but from my conversations with people working directly with the archives, this area is soon to be increasing fast.

There’s also clusters of different categories. The documentary-ish cluster making up most of the categories, and the celebratory making up the least amount of material. Fiction and editorial is also a big part of the archive.

SVT, the swedish equivalent to NRK, has a similar service to what we want to offer – an online archive free to watch.

DR, the swedish equivalent to NRK, also has a similar service. Archived content is published online for free streaming.

Öppet arkiv Bonanza

An US news agency who has published a lot of their archived content for free watching on youtube.

An UK news producer whose news film and movies from 1910 untill 1979 are fully digitalized and available online.

Associated press British Pathé

The ethnographic research consisted of surveys, observations and interviews focusing on video streaming services and people’s habits towards it. The conslusion to this process was four different archetypes for online straming. One of these archetypes was chosen as the target user before the prototyping process.

Ethnographic research

Research space

General insight

Who is the user?

This includes insight into how NRK works, their organizational structure and how content and the archive actually is produced. This is still very much work in progress as of this point.

This is based on conducting user interviews, observations and surveys. The end goal of this research was to identify common denominators in differing ways of streaming.

What is the content?

How does the user use the content?

This includes mapping out NRK’s existing media player, what content is offered and how it’s offered. Also, mapping out the content of the archive and the user journey of using it.

How does the internet usage curve look like for people in Norway, and how do people use the content that NRK has to offer?

Conducting a survey

In order to get insight into the preferences of streaming, I conducted an online survey. The survey had 31 respondents, all in the age between 21 and 29 – a big source of streaming users.

The survey aimed to find a correaltion between how they preferred to stream and how they were living – alone, with one other, in a collective or with their significant other.

The survey reults van be seen to the right, and the conclusions on the following pages. However, even though the first conclusion to this part of the research proved to confuse more than it actually clarified, I cose to include it as it was a part of my thought process and helped me get to where I ended up.

Living alone Living with a friend

Prefers watching series alone to relax, but movies with others to socialize.

Prefers watching series alone to relax, but sometimes with others, and watches

movies mostly with others.

Living with several friend Living with significant other

Prefers watching series alone to relax, but movies together to socialize.

Prefers watching most series and movies together.

What are the factors?

One of the questions in the survey was to rank the different factors in play when choosing a streaming service.

The factors included quality, price, legality, accessability, subtitles, recommendations and navigation. As one can see, many of the most important factors in play NRK already fulfull for their users. As accessability isn’t something we can do something about, navigation and recommendations (mainly navigation) is key factors we should look into during this process.

Accessability:

Quality (audio and video):

Price:

Navigation:

Legality:

Recommendations:

Texting:

Leve

l of i

mpo

rtan

ce

This interview and observation was conducted in my old collective, where six people live. This is an environment where you have the option of being extremely social in a streaming setting or more withdrawn on your own. I spent several hours with Matilde (23) while she was going about her daily life at home – doing chores, homework, eating and relaxing. Another way I tried in order to uncover information was a more serious interview where we together tried to map out a timeline consisting of before, during and after a streaming session. This proved fruitful, as it uncovered a lot of preferences to her streaming habits. The most important discoveries can been see quoted to the right.

So, when the survey results obviously was too difficult to base a conclusion on, more research had to be conducted. Obviously, getting information through a screen was not sufficient, so getting more hands-on research was necessary – hence, observations and interview.

Observation and interviewKnowing when you failed

“… if I’m watching something with others it’s usually because I want to talk with them during. But if it’s something I’m really invested in, I have to watch it alone – I need to be paying attention to what’s happening on the screen.”

“… if I’m eating or something, I often don’t even finish what I’m watching. I watch until I’m done, and then I start doing other things.”

“... I usually watch stuff late in bed, so I’m mostly watching it alone.”

“… but we watch Game of Thrones together, so it depends on the show – some we watch together, others we don’t.”

“... often I’ve even watched the episode already, but I want to watch it with [her] as well.”

This interview was more unoficcial and spontaneus, hence the lack of documentation. The interview was, as the previous, based on the time-line mapping of before, during and after a streaming session. Despite the lack of pictures, the interview proved fruitful in terms of getting insigth into habits.

Observation and interview

Observation and interview

Another technique in order to get insight into streaming habits was observing my room-mate over a period of time. What differs this technique from the others was that she didn’t know what my project was about – hence, she didn’t even know that I was interviewing her when I was. Just dropping a few questions now and then proved very fruitful.

“… I always watch documentaries alone because I prefer watching them alone. Or maybe because no one wants to watch them with me.”

Drawing parallells and conclusions

From these different ways of gathering insight – arranged interviews, observations and geruilja interviews, I was able to draw out certain conclusions and build four different modes of streaming, seen on the next page. The main findings of this result was the importance of what is on the screen – or rather the unimpartance. Different modes comes with different levels of importance, and these have a lot of value when the user is choosing what streaming service to use and what content he or she wants to watch.

“… on weekdays I watch funny comedies to relax, but in the weekends I usually watch a movie or something more interesting.”

THE

EXPLORER

“What I’m watching is not that important, as long as it’s entertaining in some way. If I have company, I often just keep the TV on for something for us to be together around.”

THE

MULTITASKER

“I usually eat or something at the same time as I’m watching. When I’m done eating, I don’t even finish what I was watching – it’s just background noise.”

The explorer is always up for discovering new content and is not dead set on finding a specific production he just have to watch. He has an open mind and doesn’t mind watching ten minutes of something just to find out that it was utter sh*t. It’s part of the game, and it’ll be worth it in the long run as he’ll find something worthwile in the end.

The multitasker doesn’t really pay attention to what’s on the screen – he’s doing other stuff like eating, homework, cleaning or paying the bills. For him, television is usually just some background noise to fill the silence in the room or to keep him company. What’s on the screen is of very little importance to him.

Importance of content

THE

ENTERTAIN-ME

“I have a lot of series that I watch continuosly as they air. I don’t have a lot of time and already watch a lot of stuff, so starting to watch something new is not really an option.”

THE

EXPERT

“I know what I want to watch and I want to find it easily. Some things I watch alone, others I watch together with someone – usually because I want to discuss it with them.”

The expert knows exactly what he wants to watch and expects to find it within a blink of an eye. Any delay in his journey and he’ll be irritated. He often has already has a lot of knowledge about the video he’s watching, hence the need to discuss it with a peer at the same time or afterwards. He may even watch something twice, just to discuss it.

The entertain-me watches a lot of productions regularly and has a high bar of pressing play on a video. He expects to be entertained when streaming online videos, and a dull moment may cause him to end the streaming session abruptly. He often watches videos before going to sleep, or as a way to stress down in the evenings.

Importance of content

Importance of content

The bar for pressing play is low. You have an open mind to what you are going to watch, and you’re not looking for anyhing in par-ticular. What you’re looking for is basically curiosa and maybe short-er clips.

The NRK’s archived content could be very fitting in this mode.

The bar for pressing play is very low. You have a certain idea of what you want to watch, but you’re relatively open-minded within your restrictions. What you’re looking for is basically background noise.

The NRK’s archived content could be fitting in this mode.

If we’re just looking at the different bars of allowing yourself to press play, the varchetypes becomes something more concrete in the sense of watching videos online. By doing this, it becomes clear where to focus the process – in the lowest and highest levels om importance of the content. For the lowest level, this means developing a way to discover new content you’ve never watched before within the archive. For the highest level, it means that the user should be able to easily find what he or she is looking for within the archive.

When it comes to prioritizing between the “Discover” and “Search” function, the former should be prioritized. Even though the archive, as it is now, is not very intuitive, you can still use the search function in the original media player to find archived content you’re looking for. However, it’s very hard discovering something new within the content, so this would be the most valuable contribution to the service. Hence, the focus on the explorer.

Narrowing it down “Discover”

THE

EXPLORER

THE

MULTITASKER

Importance of content

The bar for pressing play is medium-high. You have a very good idea of what you want to watch, and you don’t want to look outside of your comfort zone. What you’re looking for is popular culture.

The NRK’s archived content is not very fitting in this mode.

The bar for pressing play is very high. You know exactly what you’re looking for, and you’re not about to back away from watching it.

The NRK’s archived content is very fitting in this mode, as long as what you’re looking for is in the archives.

“Search”

THE

ENTERTAIN-ME

THE

EXPERT