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Communicator
TheInstituteofScienticandTechnicalCommunicators
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Improving your
videos

Reading about a
career change

Learning about the Lean

methodology

Engaging with
customers

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Video

Video for technical communicators

Building on TechSmith research, Matthew Pierce discusses: when
videos are viewed, the length of videos and keeping viewers interested.

For the purpose

of this research,
Instructional video
is defined as a video
that is purposed to
teach or educate.
(This could be a
step-by-step guide.)
Information video is
defined as a video
intended to deliver
facts, news, ideas, or
descriptions

Lets be honest, when you think of what a technical

communicator does the first thing that comes to
mind is probably not video communication and
yet video is increasingly becoming a large piece
of their workload. Whilst it is still not so common
to technical communicators that they need to
work with video daily, it is beginning to have more
of an impact on their daily lives and technical
communicators will now need to be ready to create
videos for their work.
Since video is growing in usage for technical
communicators, TechSmith Corporation, wanted
to better understand what makes a great video.
As a field and profession, if we can determine the
attributes that make a video great, perhaps we
can reverse engineer those pieces and apply them
to our own videos. TechSmiths Viewer Research
Study comprised 1900 participants from a
variety of roles and industries including financial
services, education, government, healthcare,
manufacturing, software design and development,
and more. The majority of participants fell within
the age range of 25 to 64. (See Figure 1.)
Since there are different purposes for videos,
questions were asked to help determine what type
of video they were thinking of during the research.
The types of video were narrowed down to three:
Entertainment, Informational, and Instructional.
For our purpose, we focused our research on
learning from those who were considering
informational and instructional video.

Let the Experiments Begin

Among the key learning of the research, there are
lessons that everyone who is considering creating a
video should consider, which when applied will
help guide us to creating better and more effective
visual content. Like all research, I invite you to run
your own experiments and validate the research in
your environment and for your particularaudience.

Video Viewership
With the rise of YouTube and other video sharing
sites, the amount of video being consumed on
the web is increasing. According to a report from
Cisco1, online video users are expected to double to
1.5 billion in 2016. While a lot of video viewership
will be focused on entertainment and its increasing
ubiquity, not all of it will be, some portion will be
focused on information delivery and instruction.
As video viewing increases, there are points you
should understand about how to create better
videos, which will allow for better engagement
and enable you to achieve your end goals.
Some of the results of the study give insight
into viewer habits, which may not help you craft
your content, but may help you make sure you
shape the experience. For instance, instructional
and information videos are watched most in the
morning and the evening. This could indicate
that viewers are watching when they feel they
have time. This leads to asking, what does the
information delivery need that will allow the
viewer to get the most from the information?

Importance of video length

For a number of years, I have taught people that
videos need to be short, concise, and probably no
more than three minutes in length. I have found
that whilst this is still the case, it didnt take into
consideration what viewers wanted.
The data from the research indicates that for
instructional and informational videos a higher
percentage of viewers actually prefer longer
videos, with the range varying between four to
fifteen minutes in length. When looking at those
that were flagged as good or great videos, the
length of instructional and informational videos
can sometimes be up to 10 minutes in length.
(See Figure 2.)
The length of the video may seem surprising
but with more context, it is understandable why a
viewer would prefer a longer video. Think about
the information you might want to deliver or
something you would want to teach; it can be
often difficult to condense that information down
to a one to three minute video. In addition, other
data points indicate that viewers want the right
information that will guide and direct them. If the
video has too little or too much, they arent going
to want to view it.
This is a difficult balance to achieve, but is
solvable by asking appropriate questions to
1 Cisco (2014) Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and
Methodology, 20132018 http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/

Figure 1.
Communicator Winter 2014

collateral/service-provider/ip-ngn-ip-next-generation-network/
white_paper_c11-481360.html (accessed November 2014)

31
understand what problem needs to be solved
and what information or instruction will help
to provide the solution. In fact, a number of
survey participants indicated that they stopped
watching a video because it was: not the
expected information, the wrong topic, boring
or uninteresting content. (See Figure 3.) As
you start creating videos, remember you have
flexibility in the length, but if you provide too
much information that is not directly helpful or
relevant, the video will be less effective.

Keeping viewers interested

One of the prime reasons that viewers turn
off to video is because the delivery of content
doesnt engage or appears as boring. The
TechSmith Viewer study dug into what makes
content uninteresting. There are many ways to be
considered boring, just a few of them include:
A dull or monotonous speaker
Content is by nature boring
The pace of delivery is too slow
The information is a repeat from earlier delivery
of material
A bad approach has been decided and taken.
Overcoming some of these hurdles can be
challenging. Audiences can be subjective and
depending on your audience size, you may
need to determine what is the least problematic
approach, without letting the video become
too generalised or plain which will also cause
viewers to stop watching.

communicators need to find a fine balance

between creating videos that achieve their
purpose and understanding how their viewers
will best consume their content. One cannot
exist without the other.
The best video will be created by a person
who has considered the content, how it is
delivered, the amount of detail, and even the
amount of time to ensure it does not fall flat
with viewers. In comparison to entertaining
videos, instructional and informational videos
need to work that little bit harder to win over
audiences, but through a variety of settings and
interesting approaches viewers can stick to your
content like glue. C

Matthew Pierce is an instructional

designer, video producer, visual
communicator and storyteller.
He has created video tutorials for
TechSmith Corporation, and has
facilitated sessions on using visuals to communicate.
He also hosts a web show that focuses on visual
communication.
E: m.pierce@techsmith.com
W: www.techsmith.com
B: blogs.techsmith.com
Tw: @piercemr

Further reading
Block M (2014)
Creating narrated
videos for software
Communicator,
Spring 2014: 2123
Dyer, M (2012)
Including video
in a help file
Communicator,
Spring 2012: 2324
Pierce, M (2013),
Improving visuals
for non-designers,
Communicator,
Summer 2013:
2022
Pierce M (2014)
Best practices
for screen video
Communicator,
Spring 2014: 1820

What is the best information to present?

Some participants in the study indicated that they
actually wanted different information from what
was provided in the videos they had seen. This
can be subjective as we cant always deliver what
they want versus what they need, but we should
keep in mind that viewers, especially learners
do tend to have a good gauge of whether the
information achieved its objectives.
When viewers wanted different information,
we found that what they were missing is details.
If the content was instructional in nature,
they found there wasnt enough step-by-step
instruction. Also, on many occasions the content
of the video was not accurately reflected in the
description, which can lead the viewer down
the frustrating path of starting a video only to
discover that it doesnt meet their needs.
Finally, viewers indicated that instructional and
informational videos were not specific enough. Its
easy as a content creator to assume how much any
one of your viewers may already know. And since
it can be difficult to pre-assess knowledge and
deliver just that needed , testing and being open to
feedback from your audience is critical to success.

Figure 2.

Conclusion
As we move into a digital era where
video content is becoming king, technical

Figure 3.
Communicator Winter 2014