1. Why are blogs so texty? Most blog posts are resolutely print-like save for the hyperlinks. Why?
2. Why are blogs so readerly? Web 2.x is the Read/Write web. Why don't more blog posts allow collaboration?
Why are blogs so texty?
Smashing Magazine explored texty blog posts in their Death of the Boring Blog Post piece in November, from a design perspective. But there's more to this than boringness and design. Some of the most inspiring things I saw on the web last year weren't text but something else.
I loved this presentation by Alan Cooper on Agile - "The Wisdom of Experience" (it's from 2008 but I found it last year via @choosenick's - AKA Nick Marsh - Service Design blog). And I loved @iOPT's - AKA Donald Clark - series on Agile Learning, which culminated in this Periodic Table of Agile Learning.
While I was posting on using less texty documents to Make Your Intranet Suck Less I thought: why am I not doing the same with this blog?
I've added the odd, slightly sketchy image to the posts. And I've embedded a few 'objects' like Slideshare presentations, animations, Audiboo and YouTube movies. (How to make your intranet suck less has probably the biggest selection of embeds.) But the embedded objects have always been supported/framed by text. Why do I always start with a Presumption of Text?*
Looking back at posts over the last few months, there are quite a few which would have worked better as Slideshare presentations, for instance. There may even have been a few suitable for Audioboo, film clips, animations or cartoon strips. Visitors should have to work as little as possible to get the point. Good writing's important (here's hoping that gets better too) but some media are intrinsically more effective for certain types of message. The Presumption of Text is based on convenience - for me, not you.
So, here's New Year's resolution No. 1 - make this blog less texty.If you want to see what this might look like, jump down to the end of the post for details.
Why are blogs so readerly?
People are big on talking up 'community' and the Read/Write web. Why aren't there more collaborative blog posts? Comments are all well and good. But they don't permit deletion.
It's only 'collaborative' if people can add to AND take away from the work. Commenting is mere eLaboration.I searched everywhere and failed to find a way to embed a wiki into a blog post. But I did find how to embed a Google Wave. I can think of loads of cool things to do with this - and I'll go into that in future posts - Slow Motion GMT-friendly #lrnchat anybody? But for now, here's me asking you to help me out with my texty problem. There's a link to a How To article embedded in the Wave and here. If you're still not sure after reading it, drop a comment and I'll stick up some screenshots or something. If I can do it, I'm pretty sure anybody can :).
What other forms can I use on this blog to make things clearer, quicker and more shareable?
The Wave is embedded below.
You'll only be able to see it if you're logged into your Google or Wave account.
[What to do if you don't have a Wave account? I have loads of invites and they're being turned around in less than an hour these days, so ding me in the comments or on Twitter and we'll sort you one out. (Please, no bots or chancers - anybody else is fine)]:
*There are some good reasons for getting all texty, of course.
- The fact that email subscribers and other people might be reading this on a mobile device, for instance. Half the things I subscribe to make almost no sense at all on my phone. It was only when @dajbelshaw asked me to turn on email subscriptions for this blog that I realised this might be a problem here. Any feedback appreciated - nitpickers and fusspots especially welcomed. All of us non-professionals on the web need all the Usability help we can get, I think.
- Immediacy and relatively low levels of self-censorship - this is why I started the Hypergogue blog. Posts over there are much simpler, more frequent and more, ahem, wrong. I think I'm subconsciously trying to pick a discussion with people.
- The 'form' of the blog post is relatively well-understood and people are skilled skimmers, scanners and filterers.
- Screen readers
- Cut and paste-ability
5 comments:
Good thoughts!
From my perspective one of the main problem is symbolic communication vs. analog communication. Text vs. pictures.
Symbolic communication (i.e text) has a remarkable power when it come to handling abstract concepts. But text is essentially code and therefore requiers preexisting knowledge in order to decode it. This makes text very "un-immediate".
Analog communication (icons, pictures and drawings) has the power of being very immediate. But we are not trained in analog communication which is a shame when we now have the technology that easily allows us to produce and reproduce analog com.
Scott McCloud ( http://www.scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/index.html ) and Øistein Kristiansen ( http://www.oisteinworld.com/ ) are both good ambassadors for analog communication. I can recommend exploring their websites.
What a wonderful comment! Thanks for stopping by.
I never thought of text as being symbolic before. In fact, if you'd asked me which was the 'more symbolic', I'd probably have gone for pictures. But you're right, of course.
I'm in Tokyo at the moment, and one of the things you notice is the ubiquity of analog communications. If there's the slightest opportunity to display things in pictographic form, they do.
In my notebook, I found a note today:
"Must attempt to record visual vocabulary items - eg you can draw a face on anything!"
Slightly breathless, but there are more visual vernacular materials here to draw on. And it's a cliche but Japanese people are more 'analog' because of the writing system. My seven-year-old isn't exceptional (though you will never hear me say that to his face) but has amazingly advanced drawing skills in comparison with kids of the same age in the UK.
Here's my visual thinkers tips:
Mark Changizi has some interesting insights (though few of them 'practical'.)
http://www.changizi.com/
Dave Gray is cool.
http://www.davegrayinfo.com/
And there's a whole bunch of mindmappers and viz thinkers on Twitter. Are you on Twitter?
Here's a list, for example of vizzy people:
http://twitter.com/mrinal/information-visualization
I'm planning to post some more stuff on developing a visual vocabulary but my starts on this are the approach I've detailed in this post (and the ones about intranets) and here:
http://powerfodder.tumblr.com/
This is a tumblr blog where I'm collecting images I'm using as a brainstorming tool - what could they be used to represent?
Adding to the visual thinkers people:
I forgot about Austin Kleon, who has a website here:
http://www.austinkleon.com/
And this from Lynn Walsh:
http://www.ontheplusside.com.au/wordpress/?p=1036
And, of course, this website:
http://vizthink.com/about/
I think I'll try to grab a whole bunch of those and work up a linkfest.
I added to your wave embed. Here is another comment: I highly recommend including a prezi or ahead presentation rather than a slideshare. Much more holistic view of the concept than a series of rectangles.
Here is a review I did of the two products: http://swanthinks.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/prezi-presentation-tool/
Thanks Robert - I had read your post and, like many people I know, love Prezi but can't seem to find the time (or get over the fear) to try it out.
I hadn't seen Ahead - which looks wonderful. Though, again, it's daunting.
Here's your post but clickable - Prezi and Ahead, Powerpoint killers for the web? by Swan.
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