Informative Video Paper Dec09pdf

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Copyright 2004 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered

A Theory of Informative Video 64 Functions and Ways to Implement Them Abstract: Research Question 1 UN-INFORMATIVE USE OF VIDEO: Why is the visual parts of video seldom used to convey information? Reseasrch Question 2 MODEL-LESS-NESS OF VIDEO: Is there a connection between documentaries and movies lacking models of their own contents and video contents of them not being used to convey information? Research Question 3 HOW CAN VIDEO MEANS BE USED TO INFORM: How can we find myriad ways that visual contents can be used to inform instead of merely to decorate or set moods? Any of a number of tests of the informativeness of the video content in training tapes, internet courseware, documentary TV programs, and the like show that you can get 95% or more of the content from hearing what is said, with eyes closed. In other words, for the most part, the video content of these media is not being used to convey information save for certain entertainment functions. The video component is more decorative than informative in nearly all cases. In not a few cases, it is quite evident that editors and composers of these media searched hard to find “fill in” video imagery as transitions and decorations and all-too-obvious examples of the main ideas, all of which are presented in oral form. Video media, as found in current practice, simply do not know how to use video to present information. This article outlines an overall approach to solving this problem by specifying all the ways that video can be used to inform in a well-ordered categorical model. Tools for supporting and actualizing each of the 64 informative video functions in that model can then be devised and tested rigorously. Method 1 REVIEW LITERATURE: Find from research in interfaces, communications, media, influence, reading psychology, comprehensive, memory, social psych of meaning kinds of information that visual means can convey better than audio verbiage. Eight approaches to finding ways of video to inform were found after reviewing and extensive literature in many fields touching on interface, communication, multi-media, and similar topics. RESULT---8 kinds of informing function that video does better than audio---venue inclusion, tools inclusion, main point structure display, knowledge compilation, operations on concepts noted, self change emotion requisites displayed, strata of stratified responses noted, enactment of influence functions noted. They are: identify informing functions that video does better that words do; embed in video some of the informing functions found in diverse communication venues; embed in video some of the informing functions found in particular communication tools; use video to show the structure of main points as they are mentioned or referred to in a presentation; use video to compile knowledge from one format to another as needed by a presentation; use video to visually demonstrate operations going on on concepts during a presentation; use video to set up the emotional requisites of changing your self and your frame of reference at key points in a presentation; use video to enact components of the basic personal influence functions that one person applies to another. A research agenda for exploring all of these in the same disciplined thorough way is presented at the end of this article.

The Problem to be Solved--Video as Mere Decoration Watch any video or video course or documentary video, with your eyes closed, and you will still get 98% of all its points. You can skip the entire video content of such things and still get all the content. That is a quick and dirty measure of how little video imagery is actually used to inform. It primarily decorates, instead of informing. I happened on a science documentary last night on cable TV--”Once the earth was a ball of molten rock in empty space”, shot of the earth alone in space with a quick approach to molten lava from a volcano, “then the first forms of life emerged”, shot of a green slime floating on the sea, “filling the seas with teeming lifeforms”, shot of schools of fish maneuvering in the ocean. I know what empty space is, what molten rock is, what early emerging forms of life were like, what teeming life in oceans was like--I knew all that before watching that video last night and seeing pictures of all that added nothing, not even entertainment, to my viewing. The pictures were there because they were all that the producers of the video could think of as informative using of video imagery. There are two faults involved. First, we have no idea, as stated above, of how to use video to inform, so instead we use it to decorate or entertain. Second, we have no idea, implied in the above, of what robust “understanding” of prose is, so we trust that streams of words will communicate, depending on simplifying the topic discussed and what is said about it, and how that is expressed till even a complete idiot follows the message. In our society a drive for money has linked up with this turning nearly all video work into mass market stuff, dumbed down to sell. The end result--the so-called “bloody breast epiphany” is sex and violence as the decor of entire civilizations. Verbal spoken streams of words, verbiage for short, in general, is slower than our mental capacities for hearing and processing streams of coded symbols, save for a very few people brilliant enough in thought to compose verbal streams with mystery, surprise, layers of implication, and the like folded within. When we take normal verbiage and slow it down, simplify it, and dumb it down for mass distribution we increase the gap between what normal minds find engaging and worth-attention and what we broadcast.

Approaches to Defining the Informative Potentials of Video Informative Functions Video Enables Well There are functions that video does better than anything else and functions that presentations do well if they are great presentations--stretched out between them are all sorts of functions that video either does well or that presentations must have done well. Ideally the functions that video does best would be those that make all presentations great, but ideality is not reality. Instead, we have functions that video does better than any other medium and other functions that define great presentations. Some of the functions that video does best are not central to defining great presentations and some of the functions central to defining great presentations are not best done by video. We can start with functions that video does better than verbiage of any sort--locating things in space, displaying emotion, and the like. Next, we can take tools used to amplify video, to augment what it does well, and examine their functions, seeing if video can be made to do them. This means bringing back into video format functions now done by other means that augment video delivery. This includes communicative venues other than formal presentations, to see if their unique communicative functions can be done in video form. We embed tool and venue functions back into video in these two approaches. Research on comprehension of lectures, texts, speech, dialog, and the like has found a key role for perceiving structures of topics, functions, references, assumptions, and the like. We can examine these roles of structures of various sorts in comprehension to find ones that video does well or can be made to do well. Knowledge shows up in certain formats and gets converted to other formats, when it is communicated across practices, disciplines, fields, departments, organizations, cultures, and the like. Some of these compilations from one format to another are well done in video form, others may not be. Finding which can be well done visually will moves us towards defining informative potentials of video. Emotion, social relations, and lots of other things get manipulated and nudged by video and presenting. Concepts are also thusly manipulated. The operations commonly applied to concepts in all presentations and media can be examined to find the ones that video formats particularly are effective at supporting. Finally, at the pole of functions of great communications or presentations we have two approaches: one, self and framework change achieved by messages/presentations, and two, influence enacted by them. We can examine the functions involved in changing self and frameworks and the functions involved in influencing others, whether individuals or groups, to find ones that video formats support well.

Means of Achieving the Informative Potentials of Video For each function, whether of video or of great presenting that video can do well, there is the question of how, exactly, video formats can support or enact that function. In some cases the fit of video to the function is so powerful, traditional, natural, and complete that there is hardly any thinking required or possible--locating in space is such a function, nothing competes with video for doing this fast, thoroughly, effectively, and well. There are other functions, however, like displaying hierarchies of contexts constraining a particular utterance, where we have lots of alternative ways to do this within video media. Here the question of how, of means, is important and worthy of some consideration.

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Copyright 2004 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered

Design Trade-Offs Among Means of Video Achieving of Particular Informative Functions Designers in any field build houses of quality, in the quality function deployment approach to quality achievement. These houses have roofs that show how achievement of any one function hinders or helps achievement of particular other functions. Once you have particular means of achieving functions designated for each function you can build such interaction matrices to watch these trade-offs. For example, cost lowering, as a design function, is usually inversely varying with increases in user-interface ease. If the interface is improved the cost goes up and vice versa. We do not usually have the option of optimizing both of them. They are in a trade-off relation, unless better means of doing one or the other or both are devised. Here the question of inventing better means of doing a function arises.

Inventing Better Means of Function Delivery to Bypass Trade-off Relations Between Functions

When achieving one function necessarily hurts achievement of others, we have an incentive to invent new means of achieving one or both functions. New means may transform the trade-off relation synergy into a relation--doing one function helps doin oth th

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Some Ambiguities from Informative Functions of Video

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When we “help” people understand, by giving them for free something they normally must mentally calculate, we short circuit something and may, thereby, ensure poor memory and use of the resulting ideas. There is research to support this--good presentations may be less good than bad ones if they replace within the mind calculating of certain kinds with good correct results of such calculations already done by others and put into the presentation. This is ambiguity one--ambiguity in the helpfulness of help, the easiness of ease. When we edit a presentation stream of words, spotting gaps, exaggerations, things unsupported by evidence, contradictions among points, points out of sequence, and display these edits along with the original stream of speech they come from, we, in effect, present something partial and faulty and corrections of it. That raises the imperative of fixing the original till it has not gaps, flaws, and the like (but this is an impossibility, in reality). Where does simultaneous display of editing improvements of a speech stream become irresponsible--that is, we should have improved the original to eliminate such gaps and flaws, rather than displaying them? This is ambiguity two-ambiguity in the level of corrective commentary tolerated for a message.

Any particular media, message, sequence, structuring of ideas will appeal more to some in an audience than others, more to some audiences not others, and more to some in an audience today than to that same some tomorrow. Messages that appeal to all in all audiences are never found, in reality. There are, therefore, trade-offs that make what we call “an effective presentation” or “an effective communication” ambiguous. Is one that deeply transforms 5% of the audience more effective than one that somewhat transforms 100% of that audience? Is one that deeply transforms 5% of the audience always more effective than one that deeply transforms 15% of the audience often? This is ambiguity three--ambiguity in defining effective communication. Events happen that, in seconds, utterly transform our goals, priorities, cares, and future purposes. We go about our lives, carefully structuring towards achievement of certain ends we chose and choose, till an earthquake, financial market collapse, war outbreak, observed ethical violation around us, utterly devastates those habits, commitments, aims, and values. We cannot control or predict the frameworks in the near future that determine what is effective and valuable for us now to do. In other words, we simply cannot now do things guaranteed to be of value or importance to us because we cannot control the frameworks by which we view and evaluate our lives. For example, a corporation responsibly directs itself till the combination of a financial market collapse and the rise of a new technology combine to ruin it in mere months. No one could predict that the financial market collapse would so combine with and time itself with the technology rise as to destroy the corporation’s ability to respond. This is ambiguity four--the goal ambiguity of all living. All these ambiguities are version of one thing--display of something versus inside-the-head calculation of something (topic structures display versus calculated, edits displayed versus included in original speech stream, separate detail/example streams displayed for separate audience segments versus calculated by segments from one stream). When we short circuit calculation with display, to make things easier, more complete, less errorful and biased, are we helping or hurting long term comprehension and use? What is the ratio of calculation to display that produces optimal long term retention and use? Note the shoveling information assumption within the latter statement. Presentation “of information” has the ring of lectures to it--lectures made sense before cheap publishing of books was widely available when moveable type printing was invented in China then later the West. Presentations cannot compete with books and searchable internet sites for providing most forms of information. Presentations, informative videos, excel books and searchable net sites not in shoveling information, a publishing function that lectures always were, instead of a teaching function, but in other functions, explored below. No function, means of achieving a function, trade-off among functions, invented new means to bypass trade-offs can eradicate any of these ambiguities. Therefore, these ambiguities are not valid frameworks for undermining or choosing among informative video functions, means, and trade-offs. All functions, means, and trade-offs are subject to them and diminished greatly by them. Human communication takes place within the constraint space they set up. We must apply them to all or to none, not sparingly, biasedly, to certain functions but not others.

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Copyright 2004 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered

64 Functions by Which Video Informs (Not Decorates) Functions Video is Best At Locate in Space.

We have all tried to give directions verbally and struggled to make clear relations among places clear inside our minds. Drawings, however simple, are much more time and communicatively effective than words for this function. However, it is not just physical space, but spaces of all kinds where video/picture is better than words. Concept spaces, emotion spaces, argument spaces, and many others demonstrate this.

Emotion Display.

We have all tried to tell how we feel or how someone else feels, in words. “Being there” (“you had to be there”) conveys emotion much more powerfully than later descriptions in words. Even photos of smiling, laughing, mirthful faces convey in an instant nuances that take novelists paragraphs to convey.

Show Lists of Alternatives.

We have all suggested restaurants to possibly go to before friends. After four alternatives are mentioned it becomes nearly impossible to keep restaurant names, traits, proponents in mind. A simple written list on paper or board, however, allows doubling or tripling numbers considered and details considered about each.

Show Evolving Reactions.

It is one thing to read an article or the transcript of a speech or conversation, and quite another to read them in the context of how people hearing them at the time reacted to them. Video is great at showing a message and how people hearing it respond sequentially to its parts. Reaction movies can completely change how we see and respond to an evolving message.

Compare and Contrast Sequences.

If someone is presenting one sequence, whether argument of points or steps in process or something else, and we wish to compare it with another sequence of some sort, we have a hard time. It is nearly impossible to keep any two sequences in mind, especially if they are longer than ten points and one of them is being recalled from memory as we listen to another. However, sequences can be aligned, in plural ways at once, visually, allowing ordering, naming, and other traits of them to be compared in an instant.

Layers of Context.

What any one comment means depends on the comment itself, and the topic it is being applied to. People talk and write in a hierarchy of contexts of differing scopes and lengths such that any one comment occurs, modified by several layers of topics. Hearers of a speech or talk have a hard time reconstructing all these layers of topics latent in the verbiage streaming past them. Hence, they get nearly all comments but often mistake the meaning due to missing topics the comments are being applied to, many of which are implied or calculated by bridging inferences at various layers of topics. Video, however, can display these unfolding layers of topics/context so the contexts around any one comment are visually evident and exact.

Project Multiple Frames.

We listen to talks with all sorts of habitual unconscious frameworks within us, constraining what we hear and ask of what we hear. We are not aware of most of these and therefore not aware of a lot of what we are not hearing in what is being said. Educated people know this about themselves and endeavor to apply consciously all sorts of frameworks that compensate for the known biases of the frames at work automatically within them (many of which were put into them as children while growing up in particular communities, families, genders, eras, nations, professions). Visually, we can project the key concepts of one frame onto the message being presented, then project the concepts of an entirely different frame onto the same message fragment, changing what we notice in the message and what it “means” to us. The more such frames we apply and the more diverse they are from each other, the more we notice, see, hear, and the more meaning we find.

Functions from Embedding Venues The Hierarchic Structured Paths of Lecture Venues.

Lectures are where we expect to hear well ordered, well packaged sets of ideas. We expect pre-digested by others ideas. If lectures are poorly organized or as sloppily ordered as our own casual thoughts on the topic, we are disappointed. Videos that present ideas as well ordered as usual lectures present effectively embed within themselves functions from lecturing.

Assumed Context Minimality from News Venues.

News is brief, varied, timely, and new (except most TV news--Israelis killing Arabs and vice versa, nothing new there in the recent two thousand years or so). It assumes its audience already has context for it, so not a lot of context is put into each message. A minimality of packaging is aimed for--so that much information can be conveyed in small amounts of verbiage and time. Video can display the news an item replaces, the news an item constitutes, or the news that updates what an item presents, while presenting the item itself.

Rabbit Surprises Followed Up from Interviews.

We love interviews, their question and answer format, even when the questions are not all that great, because of the surprises that interviews uncover and rapidly follow up with obvious questions. It is the unexpected “rabbits in conceptual grass” and chasing them on the spot that makes interviews fascinating. Videos can similarly instantly visually elaborate unexpected implications or ideas noticed along the way of a main stream of presented ideas.

Penetration of Personal Contexts from Advice.

Personal advice is where another person takes the time and effort of not just throwing a message at us, but watching how we receive it and tailoring next expressions so as to actually penetrate our doubts, resistances, and lack of certain contexts. Video can deploy visually such penetrations of personal context in segments of an audience while streams of main points go on.

Evidence Compared from Argument.

Arguments are matters of linkage and evidence. We attack gaps of logic, connections, and we attack unsupported assumptions or theses. Video can display linkages as visual paths with supposed gaps highlighted and they can display numbers and types of supporting and contradicting evidence for each link in a path.

Gap to Gap Flows from Questionning.

One thing that makes questionning so interesting and rewarding is the way the topic of the questions shifts not from logical link to logical link in a presentation but from gap to gap in what an audience member understands. It is this motion from gap to gap that fascinates. Videos can include windows the contents of which move from gaps to gaps in the presentation flow being presented. Or, videos can have windows that accumulate questions at gap points for later treatment as an entire set.

Edit Tries and Performance from Coaching.

Coaching is advice applied to attempts and performances. It deals with motive, manner, method, and impact of aspects of those. Videos can include coaching advice to the presenter of whatever the video presents. By highlighting while things are being presented, lackings, ways to improve, and successes attained in presenting, we get a sense of the flaws and successes of what is presented as boundaries around what we personally are getting out of it.

Induction of Categories from Brainstorming.

Workshops that include brainstorms generate variety then organize that variety into categorical models. We generate items then organize them by similarity, or some other criteria, into groups, perhaps then further organizing those resulting groups, till a hierarchy of categories is obtained from listed original items. Videos can evolve such listed items, groupings of them, names of those groupings, and groups of those groupings as topics are presented and treated during presentations in the video.

Embed Tool Functions Locating in Literature from References.

The purpose of citations is to locate ideas and arguments in the large context of a discipline’s literature on such topics. Entire maps of entire literatures can be used with currently “being mentioned” topics plotted on such maps, showing the overall path of topic flow across the entirety of what a discipline of knowledge covers. Videos can not only include citations but can, by visually organizing spaces individual citations appear on, trace paths of evolving reference, showing entire portions of literatures or topic spaces ignored or covered by presentations.

Population Segments from Polls.

Polling shows us how populations break up into segments differing in attitude, action, talent, or some other value. Videos can relate various aspects of what is being presented to such segments of populations, plotting evolving presentation content on segments or segment reactions.

Person Segments from Questionnaires.

Questionnaires show us how individual people break up into segments of different attitude, action, talent, experience or some other value. Videos can display how current topics and treatments of topics relate to such segments of persons, displayed visually as spaces the topics move among.

Enduring Themes and Focus from Posters.

Posters differ from slides in that they stay the same during entire presentations or advertise before of after them. Videos can have poster functions in them that display layers of themes each of which endures over a different scale of time, some of themes changing every minute, others of themes changing every 3 minutes, others of themes changing every 10 minutes, and so on.

Links of Models or Arguments from Slides.

Slides are sequences, steps, in logical connecting, chronologic sequence, or other tightly ordered arrangements of one thing after another. Properly done each slide moves the audience one interesting step beyond present imaginings and expectations. Videos are great venues for displaying paths and locations on paths, and quality of links among points on paths.

Frame Repertoires Applied from Panels.

Panel discussions at conferences are merely ways to get diversity applied to topics. They are diverse frameworks applied by getting diverse people (professions, ages, genders, methods, interests, ideologies) to address the same issue. They are diversity of framework displays. Videos can simultaneously display entire maps of hosts of diverse frameworks and plot current topics and treatments being presented on such spaces, or videos can display one framework after another applied to the evolving contents of a presentation.

Expert Protocols from Workshops.

Workshops are places where world best procedures for doing some function are captured and applied by others. Videos can display sequences of steps of any procedure, whether world best or not, or both, showing them simultaneously and commenting or visually marking differences between them.

Optional Elaboration from Handouts.

Handouts are tools where points in a presentation are elaborated to levels of detail beyond what the presentation itself can include (given time and other limits). Handouts are also spaces where personal notes can be related to the ongoing flow of topics in a presentation. Handouts are also copies of what is visually displayed in a presentation or of what is spoken. Videos can present, simultaneously or sequentially, three or more size scales of points, with a visual window elaborating the lowest scale level in writing as oral treatment presents higher scale levels of points (or vice versa, higher levels presented visually while oral presentation handles lowest level detailed points).

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Copyright 2004 by Richard Tabor Greene, All Rights Reserved, US Government Registered

Show Structure Show Structure of Topics.

What is being talked about can be distinguished from what is being said about it. This involves levels of what is being talked about and what is being said. To understand the “meaning” of one phrase of any utterance, we have to interpret what the words and intonation and style of that utterance indicate from the point of view of each of the encompassing topics that specify what the utterance is talking about. People who lose track of what is being talked about, particularly higher level, larger scope, more abstract topics, get only a fraction of the meaning of each utterance they encounter, though they may confuse their partial fractional understanding for complete understanding (till others nearby “get” much more from the same message than they got). Calculating this hierarchy of what is being talked about as speech elapses or as test is read is so important a cognitive skill that all the world’s leading universities have always, in history, tested people on this and used scores gotten to select those allowed to attend. Video can display these evolving layer structures of what is being talked about as well as what is being now said about each part of that layered structure of topics. However, we normally have to calculate this hierarchy of topics in our own mind, by making bridging inferences between clauses and sentences. Research shows that the deeper the number of topic levels we thusly calculate, the more points we retain and the longer we remember them. Hence, videos that give us this topic hierarchy structure for free as a given display by short circuiting our own calculating work may reduce retention of points--ease makes difficulty--a paradox.

Redirect via Structural Remarks at Intervals.

We can imagine videos that stream displays of evolving topic hierarchy structure versus videos that do not stream them but rather punctuate with them--at regular intervals interrupting a stream of speech with displays of the structure of topics covered thus far and questions about that overall direction, the answers to which turn out to determine what flow of topics comes next.

Stratify Responses.

Gas chromatographs, gel electro phoresis, and like devises input some goo and watch as the components of the goo separate themselves under the influence of gas flow parameters or electronic power parameters. You end up with displays of bands of components, with the spacing of the bands and the height or darkness/color of the bands helping in identifying what component each band is made of. Human response to situations has bands too, though some bands simultaneously occur while others have time delays. There is a rough sequence of response with noticing objects preceding slightly feelings evoked by objects noticed, for example. In general, psychology research supports noticings, feelings, remindings, associations, patterns, unconsciously evoked frames, consciously applied frames, interpretations, decisions, in this order. Any situation evokes all these strata, with a sequence of responses resulting in flows of contents in all these strata in parallel. By separating each stratum and trying for completeness of response at each stratum before moving onto other later strata, individuals and groups can spot bias and blindness inside them active via automatically evoked unconscious noticing, feeling, reminding, association, pattern, frames, interpretation, and decision. By consciously countering automatic contents, noticings, responding in each stratum, people can develop rapidly beyond their own cultures, birth habits, nationalities, genders, eras, and the like. Videos can display response contents simultaneously on all these strata of particular experts, or particular amateurs, or average responses of certain audience groups hearing a presentation.

Demystify.

Everyone tries to align what they say and do with the interests of whatever audience they have. Every presentation, whether consciously or unconsciously, attempts this alignment. Moreover, we are raised as children to automatically trust and depend on various roles and institutions around us, assuming, unconsciously for decades, that, say, physicians are there to help our health. Only later as adults do we find discrepant situations where physicians hurt us deliberately in order to maximize not our health but their own income. As people age, they accumulate overwhelming amounts of such discrepant situations. They learn to distrust all roles, people, situations, and institution pretending to share our interests and to be working to “help” us. They demystify the world, that is, remove automatic trust and dependency put inside people as they grow up. Any segment of any presentation can be demystified as well. Displaying visually such demystification amazes and informs people. Videos that display demystifications of what is now being said, keep audience automatic responses at bay and make people aware of how their own minds betray them into vassalage and slavery.

Edit Evolution. We notice what is exaggerated, poorly supported by evidence, self contradictory, poorly expressed, overly compressed, overly prolix, out of order, organized badly, and the like as we hear a speech or view any presentation. We notice all this but usually forget most of it, which prevents us improving the presentation or offering improvement suggestions to the speaker. These edits form a kind of commentary on what we hear as it comes to us. Viewing such evolving edits visually in a video along with the speech or presentation that produces them in some expert or ordinary observer, has much value and interest for us. We are all curious about how other people are reacting to what we hear. We especially wish to see how more expert people are reacting to what we hear as acceptable or impressive content. Triple Writing and Hearing.

Good writing is done three times: first, to see what we think, second, to organize that well for us, third to present that improved organization of ideas well to particular audiences of others. All good writing is done three times in this way, though geniuses can do them all simultaneously in their heads, to a degree. Good speaking is similar--we speak to discover what we think, we speak to organize well for us what we think, and we speak to convey well to audiences of others that improved organization of our ideas. Of course speech, unlike writing, is not easy to edit without losing its audience and it has time constraints writing does not suffer from. So speech, in general, is inferior to writing in: the degree to which it discovers ideas, the organization of the ideas it discovers, and the degree to which that better organization of ideas is conveyed well to particular audiences. Videos that in parallel display visually the ideas discovered, better ways to organize them, and better ways to convey them to present audiences are a self contradiction--if we knew all that improvement we would have made the original presentation better in the first place. Nevertheless, making a great presentation, then getting someone expert to note idea latent in it, better or alternative ways to organize it, and ways to package and convey those alternative idea organizations, allows us to see two presentations of the same content unfold in competition.

Regularize Structure.

Meaning has, among other traits, count (number of points being made), name (names of each point distinguishing them from preceding and following ones and factoring upward ideas shared by lower level topics in a flow), and order (the principle by which points are ordered--top, middle, bottom; easy, difficult, impossible; low cost, low quality, low delivery, etc.). Each of these, if irregular, taxes human short term memory capacity making retaining meaning difficult. If I regularize hierarchies of points so each branch point has the same branch factor (3 top level points each having 3 middle level subpoints each having 3 lowest level subsubpoints for example) people can remember, recall, and reproduce more of what they hear or read. If I regularize name formats to reflect position of points laterally and vertically in topic hierarchies, people remember, recall, and reproduce more. If I regularize principles of ordering so they are the same horizontally among all points at the same level and vertically among all levels of a hierarchy of points, people remember, recall, and reproduce more. If a video displays in evolving windows such regularizations of points being made, the same benefits for long term retention obtain.

Generalize Structure.

Hierarchical regularized structures of topics, functions, imagery, actions, or other contents of presentations can have just enough concreteness left in them from the case they were developed from, to prevent general application. If we make more abstract such structures, keeping relations among points, the structure, unchanged but making points one level more abstract, we get more generality of application. Videos that contain displays showing such more abstract renditions of the structures of points in their presentations, invite audiences to imagine quite general application possibilities.

Compile Knowledge Emotion/motive + frame = observation.

What we observe, what we notice, in situations, is strictly controlled by emotions and motives within us and by frameworks we consciously apply to compensate for known biases and faults in emotions and motives within us. Videos that spot the emotions, motives, and frameworks applied by a presenter presenting, and suggest alternative emotions, motives, and frameworks keep audiences from falling into rhetorical traps and keep speakers from confusing convincingness to themselves with truth.

Observation + frame = data.

After applying numerous frames to what we observe so that we observe more of situations than others applying fewer and less diverse frames, we then choose the best few frames that suffice to allow noticing all that we have managed ourselves to notice. This optimal set of frameworks turns observations into data. It is the means of making data representative of what is there to be noticed in a situation. If it data guaranteed to widen most people’s view and understanding, not narrow them. Videos that display such minimal optimal sets of frames for viewing evolving content in the presentations they contain turn audience observations into data.

Data + frame = information.

Information is inputs that potentially change our knowledge. We get information from data by applying frames not optimized to get us to notice all in a situation but optimized to make connections between the data and what we already know and want to know. Data plus frameworks consciously selected to connect parts of the data to parts of what we already know or want to know becomes information, that is, inputs to what we know. Videos that present such frameworks that make connections between presentation points presented and what audiences already know or want to know, generate information.

Information + frame = knowledge.

The frameworks that already organize our existing knowledge if applied to information and challenged by information to grow turn information into new knowledge inside us. There is always two types of such new knowledge--knowledge that fits within existing favored frameworks and knowledge that challenges/undermines/extends such existing frameworks forcing us to construct better new frameworks in order to accommodate the information being input. Videos that show how information fits into our existing favored frameworks and how other information undermines and suggests replacements for or great modifications of particular favored frames within us turn information into knowledge.

Knowledge + frame = capability.

We all know living mental libraries--people who collect information but do nothing with it. Japan’s best universities turn out such graduates--they know everything but in memorized bits and pieces that do not add up to any useful implementations of knowledge. We have to apply certain frameworks to knowledge in order to see new goals to aspire to fulfillment of and new means of fulfilling existing goals. Videos that show frameworks that, when applied to new knowledge from presentation contents, produce new goals for us or new means to fulfill some of our existing goals turn knowledge into new capability.

Capability/need + frame = action.

Spotting new goals and new means to existing goals can go on in the mind endlessly without changing either us or the world. To get to the point of changing something, such new capability or need spotting has to transform into action. That happens by adding new frameworks that turn new goals and means into risk-filled actual injections into the world around us = action. Action is us courageously messing with the world, not being able to predict all the consequences of what we do. Videos that show frameworks that turn new goals and means into actual actions we will commit to and risk, turn capability and need into action.

Action + frame = evaluation.

The question “what happened” is a perceptual matter--did we notice all that transpired in a situation, and judgement matter--did we value positively or negatively each piece and all that transpired. We add frameworks to actions and their consequences in order to turn them into evaluations of whether wanted or better outcomes eventuated or whether more action and different sorts of action are warranted. Videos that supply frameworks boat transform consequences of action into evaluations of results attained or needs for better and different future actions turn action into evaluation.

Evaluation + frame = emotion/motive.

Closing the circle, this item refers to us applying frameworks to evaluations change how we feel, giving us motivation for new observing and involvement or generating emotions that move us off of one direction of action and thought onto entirely other ones. We apply certain frameworks to evaluations we make

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of consequences of our actions to turn such evaluations into keeping with the same direction of motive and effort or shunting us aside to entirely different ones. Videos that display such frameworks do the same.

Conceptualize Decompose concepts.

Audiences have a certain variety in them. This is managed by segregating people into different hierarchical layers of events--some for experienced elites, some for novices, some for “general” publics. The ideas one wants to convey get expressed entirely differently for different such audiences. To the extent such audiences are truly homogeneous this works well, simplifying how and what to present. To the extent, however, that such audiences are not homogeneous, such a strategy fails. We have another avenue of handling this problem, however, presenting orally one approach to decomposing concepts while visually in parallel presenting alternative decomposition types or amounts. In other words, one video presentation can simultaneously present several different decompositions of its content ideas--few or no decompositions for experts, moderate or few decompositions for intermediately experienced people, and every idea decomposed into components for novices and non-experts.

Locate concepts.

We locate concepts in two dimensions--relative to other ideas in the same presentation and relative to established fields and how their ideas are structured. Presenters rarely get to do both of these locations well for every idea that they present. As a result, they locate none of their ideas well, or locate a few well relative to field and none well relative to the presentation’s other points or locate a few well relative to the presentation’s other points and none well relative to field. Video allows simultaneous locating of every presented idea both to field and rest of presentation.

Distinguish concepts.

Horizontally we have to distinguish concepts adjacent in a flow from each other, the relational naming principle. Vertically we have to distinguish concepts adjacent in a hierarchy of levels of generality, the representational naming principle. Since sloppy thinking is behind and found in most presentations, nearly all to be exact, and since presenters work hard to deceive themselves as well as audiences about the errorlessness and expertness of all they present and think, we are sure to find the crux of the errors or truth of most presentations somehow embedded in distinctions they overtly make that make no sense ultimately or in distinctions they fail to make that must be ultimately made for things to make sense. Presentations the least bit vague or sloppy or incomplete in distinctions they make cannot be trusted and must be examined by audiences critically and carefully. Often there is a related completeness of distinctions problem. Presenters who fail to distinguish or who make tendentious specious distinctions often do this in the form of simply omitting a few distinctions or dimensions of distinguishing. Such incompleteness of distinguishing is very common--found in nearly all presentations in every field. Videos that, as ideas are presented, display definitions, comparisons, and distinctions of those idea with others add value. They perform a vital function.

Factor concepts. Factoring ideas is analogous to factoring numbers (3 and 21 share the common factor 3, becoming 1 and 7 times 3; Hitler and Napoleon share the common factor Russian winter becoming Germanic and French hubris brought low by Russia’s winters). One of the omnipresent distortions of truth and ideas found in presentations is incorrect naming of topics and themes shared by several adjacent or related ideas. That is categories. Category names that include a lot more than what is common the ideas under them or category names that omit a lot of what is shared by the ideas under them greatly distort truth and are an primary means of bias and deliberate non-truth telling in professional, academic, and other presentations. Video display of the common ideas shared by adjacent or related ideas within a presentation while those ideas are being discussed can reveal such bias or distortion within the presentation or its absence. Exemplify concepts.

Presenting connects ideas to audiences often via grounding examples--examples that put the idea into the contexts in which audience people live and work in their ordinary lives. There are other functions that examples perform in presentations--extending ideas, making ideas absurd, fusing ideas, and so on. The problem in real presentations is, again, the matter of audience homogeneity. If audiences are homogeneous then presenters can set the number and level of examples appropriately--few or none for experts, and all for novices. If audiences, however, are not homogeneous then a problem arises--experts will chafe at seeing examples they do not need and novices will chafe at seeing ideas without examples they need. Videos that display examples of all concepts, some, or a few can please non-homogeneous audiences.

Ground concepts.

The grounding function is vitally important in any presentation. It is where the ideas being treated get connected with where the audience’s minds are. If this connection is not made there is in effect not audience at all--they are lost, dissatisfied, and more than likely doing other work while going through the motions of listening. This vital function is hard to fulfill if audiences are at all heterogeneous--grounding that experts need differs greatly from grounding that novices need. Video displays can satisfy simultaneously both experts and novices by offering grounding examples, unmentioned in the words spoken, yet related to the ideas spoken.

Blend, link, order, configure concepts.

Concepts by themselves do not do much; they must link, combine, configure to affect us. Orally or even in writing handling this is frustrating at best. Strings of sequentially delivered symbols are inherently a bad way to convey (slow, errorful) configurations and linkages of things. Videos that display such things visually outperform speeches and writing by huge margins.

Apply concepts. School systems teach people to accumulate memorized bits and never apply them. This suits most governments and self-celebrating business leaders fine. Learning to apply one’s own concepts is hard work because it involves overcoming decades of indoctrination in not applying concepts given in family life, religions, and school systems. Above, in this paper, eight steps in moving from emotion and motive to evaluating action and the emotions and new motives that generates were presented. That eight framework applications separate emotions and observations from actions and evaluations hints at the difficulty of applying ideas. Videos that present the frameworks that link emotions to observations to data to information to knowledge to capabilities/needs to actions, to evaluations to emotions/motives help people learn to apply ideas instead of just accumulating or sitting on them. Self and Frame Change Communication as setting up environments that others adapt themselves to.

Boulding in a book The Image many decades ago, detailed how single messages, however good and well delivered, always fail to get people’s ideas, commitments, interests, and actions to change. Though there are non-linear system dynamics hidden all over personalities and societies where the tiniest inputs suddenly change entire systems, most non-linear dynamics are small, large, and all sorts of inputs failing to change anything much at all, in fact most non-linear systems simply dissipate nearly every input into them. We all want our own little message to be a “tipping point” but in reality most messages never tip any system anywhere. Communication, then, does not consist of and does not take place when a message is sent and received. Communication takes place when environments are erected that people adapt themselves to. Speeches and presentations because they are primarily oral, even when helped by slides, are not good at setting up environments. Videos are better at becoming environments than usual speakers and worse at it than great speakers are (because great speakers interact with audiences, use tools other than slides, get audiences groups suggesting and editing ideas, and the like).

Liberation, freedom, historic dream, conserving novelty.

Power starts with negative power--the ability to interrupt the plans and actions of others and evolves through assertion power--the ability to get one’s own ideas onto the agendas of more powerful others--to partnering power--the ability to collaborate in jointly building agendas with others--and ending in transformative power--the ability to get self and others to transcend the agendas of both. Corresponding to each of these stages in developing power are stages in social revolution--liberating self and others from tyranny, liberated ones freely interacting via mutually promises kept till new power spontaneously emerges among them, people worldwide and history long attracted to that emergence of the truly new into history, and work to conserve the liberal, preserve what is genuinely newly born into history. These correspond to power stages: liberation as negative power, freedom as assertive power, historic dream as partnering power, and conserving novelty as transformative power. Presentations do these stages if they change their audiences in any way. Videos can assist this process greatly by demonstrating more clearly what is needing liberation from and what sorts of liberation work, what sorts of free combining sparks emergent novelty and what sorts do not, and the like.

Response stopping.

We all want a lot of change in the world. Paradoxically we achieve little change in ourselves. Leaders want a lot of change by others, more change than they are willing to make in themselves, hence, most leaders are paradoxic if not also paratoxic. The amount of self change a person accomplishes is a strict limit on the amount of leadership they can exert without follower cynicism and demoralization (and eventual end of following). The core of self change, regardless of method tried, is response stopping--spotting automatic responses before they reach public visibility and slowly with effort substituting for the easy and automatic “natural” response, a preferred slow, difficult, conscious unnatural response (that by practice rapidly becomes automatic in a few days or weeks). Presentations invite or get people to stop such automatic responses. That is presentations that want to impact people and the world must attempt to get audiences to stop preferred favored habitual responses. Here oral voice streams of words are probably more powerful than visual displays. the question is, what is the best that visual display can do to stop responses favored and habitual to audience members.

Bridge community.

When people change their primary block is their friends and family, who have invested on the old “you” and do not want the surprise work of building relationships with any new improved “you”. Therefore, people who are changing are people who are alone, abandoned by their primary family and friends. They need people around them who welcome the new “you” they are building. There is a name for such a community, the “bridge community”. Presentations can give people a sense of such a bridge community being available for particular changes people might make (suggested by the presentation). Presentations can also supply phone numbers, email net contacts, and actual practicalities of meeting such bridge communities. Videos can display such information while speeches make the case for particular self changes.

Translating practices across cultures.

One major self change is doing what you do in altogether new environments or environs. Any practice or procedure developed in one environment and working well there depends on supports no one there is aware of and handles hinderances there also that people are unaware of. When that practice gets applied somewhere else, it runs into new supports and hinderances, and it runs out of the old supports and hinderances found in the environment where it was invented. That means four things are always involved translating a practice across cultures, families, nations, cultures, organizations--handling new hinderances, handling new supports, handling missing former supports, handling missing former hinderances. Speeches can present ways to handle these four. Videos that present handling these four at key points during a presentation work well and take burden off of the oral stream in the presentation.

Dimensions of cultures.

The culture of another era, person, nation, gender, profession, practice, technology often stops us or requires change if we are to extend our scope of acting and influence. Unfortunately we fail to characterize what we face in most cases, missing things that are there. The salient parts of our own unconsciously acquired cultures define for us automatically the dimensions of all other cultures we encounter, hiding other dimensions there but that we miss, not being used to them in our own. Having, therefore, an abstract comprehensive model of dimensions of all cultures along which all cultures can be articulated in precise detail, allows us to map what is other that we face, what is there to be faced in exact particularity. It forces us to see dimensions not natural or automatic in us. Self change is greatly eased when we see all that is different, all that we face. Speeches and presentations can reveal and directly handle such dimensions but most of them omit many such dimensions. Videos that present such dimensions while speech is going on and that expose dimensions being ignored in such speaking are valuable.

Anxieties of existence.

All that we are and see, as world around us, is erected by each of us individually each day as a bulwark against the immensity of the universe, our tiny human part of that immensity and the anxieties that we are negligible and not central in the scheme of things. Gods of all sorts give people the message that they are central, so much so that most religions encouraged actively dominating and destroying animals and other life forms as proof of “human” superiority and right to rule the earth. It could not be more obvious

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that people historically feel unimportant and erect symbols to tell them that they are more important than they really feel. Religions in this way are a primary lie that people tell themselves in order to deny their true centrality in the scheme of things. Self change and group change often involves getting people to un-clutch one illusion that makes the world easier and smaller and getting them to clutch a slightly less illusory illusion in which the world is a little less easy and illusory. We change by facing the phoniness and dishonesty of our models of self and society and replacing what is human-serving and human-centric in them with things more honest and less hiding from the marginality of humans in the universe. People at home in the marginality of humans in the universe rarely support mass murder to prove that their god is righter than someone else’s god. Presenter and speeches primarily switch people from one set of illusions hiding them from the anxieties of existence to a better (less illusory) or worse (more illusory) set of such illusions. Videos can do this by keeping tack in evolving video display form of what illusions are being assumed, fostered, debunked at each point in a presentation, helping people see via others’ illusions their own.

The one story that all stories are subsets of.

As people age they notice that all TV programs, all movies, all novels, all personal stories by friends and family bore them, more and more. This is simply due to accumulating experience till fewer and fewer of the stories of others offer surprises or new expressions of old emotions or expressions of new emotions never felt before. It is very much as if there is one overall story that all stories are subsets of and as we hear various subsets we eventually intuit the whole story and thereafter no individual story surprises us. Indeed researchers into stories, religions, faiths, beliefs, commitments, loyalties, leaderships, and the like have found one story that all individual stories are subsets of--the self change story. Every myth of every religion merely repeats it, emphasizing parts, dropping other parts. Every novel and movie merely repeats it, emphasizing parts and dropping parts. Every presentation and speech merely repeats it too, emphasizing and dropping parts. Videos can keep track via visual display in parallel with what is being said by one or a few people, of the parts of this one story now being presented, presented thus far, and being omitted.

Influence functions Magic: persuade and lead.

We persuade and lead people by establishing magic--the gap between results obtained and means used (we impress with results while hiding our means till our results, being unexplained in means terms, astonish others causing them to believe we are bigger and better than we really are). Nearly all persuasion and leadership is established in the lie at the heart of magic--we make people believe in magic of our selves (leaders) or of our ideas (persuasion), by hiding our means of achieving results. Presentations can achieve this magic by getting results by hiding their means, impressing audiences, achieving thereby leadership or persuasion. Videos can display distracting material hiding means that helps set up magic for leading and persuading.

Ground: negotiate and argue.

There are two kinds of grounding--connecting to user or audience experience and basing ideas of solid kinds of evidence. Negotiations progress via getting parties to suffer through, mutually, intense emotional episodes and crises that establish among them the experiential grounds for shared fellow feeling and trust. Negotiations become communities among parties, solace systems, where all parties care for the individual outcomes and lives of all other parties. When such communities emerge, agreements emerge. Arguments progress via linking kinds of evidence for and against points and comparing all traits of such evidence till all parties lose interest in individually offerred or favored links as the whole panorama of links becomes obviously more important and interesting. This is establishment of an idea community that diminishes interest in individual idea and opinion. Presentation can do this. Videos that keep track of and visually display crises and community emerging from responses to them shared by all parties, and, argument points and idea community emerging from individual points, linking together into strings of logic foster influence via grounding.

Framework: communicate/transplant across cultures.

One of the most important paths to innovation, invention, discovery, and creation is taking something and applying it in entirely different circumstances. Transplanting a method, idea, goal, variable configuration from one practice or field to another virtually automates creativity. Creativity is a major type of influence. Videos that run parallel tracks, one where a speaker presents some ideas in one framework and other tracks where the same ideas are displayed being applied to entirely different circumstances, cultures, situations achieve this sort of creating-by-translating-across-cultures.

Attention: change minds/sell.

Attention getting, that is, visibility, is perhaps the primary resource of modern civilization. People who achieve high visibility via criminal acts effectively turn that notoriety into massive wealth in later years in modern cultures. Morally distorted as this is, it demonstrates the power of visibility. Advertising is very much an entire industry directed at getting attention in non-criminal ways. Selling, in the one-on-one encounter of salesperson with potential customer is also attention getting at its core. Getting attention is a primary form of influence. Videos can get attention in a speaking track and in parallel displays that compete for attention with it. They can dance attention around among a number of displayed-in-parallel windows or actions. Indeed just when a talking person bores other simultaneously displayed windows can catch the wayward attention thusly freed up.

Limits: use mental flaws and beauty.

The way we all think departs from reality in systematic ways. Our minds automatically see and prefer certain patterns that depart from reality. For eons people (leaders and others) have noticed and used some of these flaws in thought to direct people where they want. Less harmfully, we all see certain traits as beautiful, whether in faces, bodies, ideas, architecture. Some of this beauty response is hard-wired into brain neurons but much of it is socially instilled. We influence by using mental flaws and by using human built-in propensities to see beauty and seek beauty out. Videos can keep track of mental flaws exercised in the course of a presentation or exploited in audience members during presenting. Videos can dissect what traits of beauty are now being exploited by parts of a presentation seen in parallel in another window.

De-neuroticize: enthuse and solution cultures.

Though we all work to make ourselves feel confident in our selves daily and work hard to make others see us as successful and confident, we live over an abyss of anxiety about what a tiny part of the entire universe living things and people are. We invent Gods precisely to tell us what we know it not at all true--we are central, the Gods say, in this universe, when in reality it is perfectly clear daily that we are not central in any way. One powerful way that influence happens is when anything at all sees and addresses any of the fundamental anxieties in our lives daily that we hide from and paper over. Similarly, what we are willing to call “a solution” is usually something guaranteed to perpetuate our most serious problems. That is we are unwilling to call a solution things that change so much of our attitudes and habits that problems actually go away. We prefer solutions that make symptoms go away temporarily while allowing we ourselves to change nearly nothing about our selves. When we reverse these cultures of failure within us, and use the resulting solution cultures to invent new products of work and ways of work, we succeed. Addressing foundational anxieties and foundational self illusory “failure cultures” in us, is a primary way all influence takes place. Videos can display the actual names of anxieties and failure culture traits being presented by a speaker and therefore help us keep track of how the presentation seeks to influence us by shifting our handling and awareness of anxieties or failure culture traits.

Tell/untell: demystify and tell stories.

Telling stories is a primary avenue of influence as is untelling stories--showing how stories we commonly accept mystify things, hide conflicting self interests from us giving us the illusion that others have our own interests at heart. We tell stories to get others feeling that we have their interests in mind and at heart, and we untell such stories told to us by others to reveal how those others manipulated us with such stories so we accepted serving their interests more than or at the cost of hurting our own interests. Videos can have dual tracks, one showing the stories the presentation is now telling that tend to get us to see how the speaker’s interests and our own are the same and the other showing (by untelling such stories) how our interests actually are not at all the same as the speaker’s interests and hence how the speaker is attempting to manipulate us into a position of dependent weakness in the name of “empowering” us. Videos with dual tracks are perhaps the best way to handle this type of influence.

Surround: strategy and love.

Another way we influence others and they influence us is surrounding. Strategy is us taking as happenstance, coincidence, chance things actually designed and put in place by others. Love is us taking as selfless actions and given cares that always before happened only with steep costs and quid-pro-quos for us. Both strategy and love influence by surrounding us, drawing us away from other options, alternatives, and commitments. Both strategy and love break, leaving us isolated, having burnt bridges behind us in our passionate onrush of enthusiasm for the environments strategy and love erect to influence us. Videos have plural ways of appealing to us that surround in ways speeches and slideshows cannot. Videos can display parallel tracks missing from speeches and slideshows that help messages to evolve into environments that surround us.

Dimensions of Design for Informative Videos One would like to take all the best (here, most informative) videos already in the world, and look at how they achieved what they achieved. When I tried this, however, some years ago, I found that closing my eyes preserved 98% of all content in the video--the visual parts of the video were not being used to convey information, they were decoration. This was true for videos costing thousands of dollars per DVD, sold to businesses, and the most famous academic lecture videos and broadcast education videos. It was true for Bollshoi Ballet videos and San Diego art fair videos. This avenue does not work because present video composition practice simply does not explore the informative potentials of the visual contents and arrangements of videos. That leaves much more difficult and more abstract work needing to be done, which I outline below. Furthermore, imagine the same content presented in a dozen different ways in competitive video designs, in order to find the “best” (most informative) design. The strict separation between ideas conveyed, content, and 64 informing functions and various means of delivering and combining those into a design that this requires may not be possible. Content contaminates design traits and vice versa. So we can set up approximate design competitions and get results but these will almost surely not be pure versions of exactly the same content delivered variously. The 64 informing functions that this article presents and various proposed means of achieving each in actual videos are a major tool for separating content from delivery means enough to get some research knowledge benefit from comparing various video designs. Between content and means comes informing functions, presented above, giving research based on this tripartite distinction more precision and more separation of content from means than otherwise would take place. With 64 functions of informative videos possible, laid out above, the question is whether we should aspire to realizing all of them in any one video, which subset of them if all are not needed, and what exactly are the trade-off relations among them such that achieving one helps achieving certain others and hinders achieving other others. We could try to design videos realizing all 64 functions, compare designs realizing every single subset of all 64 (billions in all), and explore thousands of trade-offs among these 64 functions. However, each such tedious, long exploration effort, however systematically done, promises slow production of value and insight. We want a short cut of some creative sort. Our research question is: Of the identified possible functions of informative videos, what combinations of them, when used to make actual videos, produce valuable improvements in communication, influence, impact, and value received from video encounters? Call this the “Optimal Function Combination” dimension of design for informative videos. Each of the 64 informative functions presented earlier in this article is just a function, the means of achieving that function is unspecified and for each function a number of means can be imagined. What are the possible means for delivering each of the 64 functions and how do those means change when particular combinations of functions are being displayed together in parallel or in sequence? What are the best means for delivering each function and particular combinations of those functions? This can be called the “optimal function delivery means combinations” dimension of design for informative videos. Handling the ambiguities of informative video that started this article constitutes another dimension . Does supplying via displays the structure of evolving topics in a presentation, help by making more accurate and complete the audience realization of such underlying presentation structure or hurt by short circuiting mental calculation work that allows presentation points to stay lastingly in the mind accessible for application use--this was one of those ambiguities, deserving of serious research. Call this the “Do Particular Helps Actually Help” dimensions of design for informative videos.

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Imagine parallel displays in a video with a major display showing a person speaking and around that various other evolving displays that link to the contents in that first display and elaborate, edit, or comment on it in any of various (64) ways. How many parallel displays and what degree of visual complexity and attraction power of such parallel displays enhance informativity of videos and how many and what degree of complexity and attraction power reduce informativity of videos. Call this the “Attention Loading” dimension of design for informative videos. Imagine audience members dynamically enhancing and shrinking any of many parallel displays at different points during a presentation. What parallel displays do all audience member types get informative video value from and which parallel displays achieve such value throughout all parts of any presentation, and which parallel displays are best for some parts and functional areas of any one presentation and best neglected for other parts? These question constitute what we can call the “Dynamic User-Configuration” dimension of design for informative videos. These five above dimensions of design define a world needing exploration by future research. Along with them is another dimension, a sixth: what types and degrees of informativeness and information retention and use are possibly consistently achievable by particular video design types. That is, when we explore dimensions of design not yet explored in composing videos we can expect outcomes not yet achieved by present designs of videos. We must explore not only the dimensions of designs not yet used but the outcomes not yet achieved. Call this the “Not Previously Attained Informativeness/Impact Result” dimension of results from new video designs. Videos are single tools. Only fools think that buying or viewing or otherwise using single tools achieves much change in any part of the world. Unfortunately we have billions of people and dollars invested yearly in computer tools as if new software transforms business processes and ways of work among people. In this we confuse modifications with changes--happenstance changes with intended and wanted ones. Specifying a software system is suicidal. For alongside any new software system a host of accompanying social changes and tactics are needed if ways and outcomes of work are to change. Software along modifies work more than changing it (it forces people to improvise how to do things the old way using the new tool-people are amazingly good at this sort of improvisation to save themselves effort and change). Similarly, putting single videos before people without accompanying technical tools and social changes is unlikely to do much. What must any particular video be accompanied by in the way of technical new tools and social new configurations in order to actually achieve wanted changes in things is an arena for future research, a dimension of design, fully as important as the above six. Call this the “Accompanying Technical and Social Tool/Changes” dimension of design of informative videos.

Dimensions of Informative Video Design (An Implicit Experiment Design Agenda) 1.Optimal Informing Function Combination 2.Optimal Delivery Means for Each Informing Function 3.Optimal Combinations of Informing Functions 4.Optimal Combinations of Informing Function Delivery Means 5.Trade-offs Between Display and Inside-the-Head Calculation (display vs. calculation for topic structures, edits, audience segments; how helpful are particular helps) 6.Attention Loading (amount and type for both parallel and sequential means combinations) 7.Dynamic User Configuration 8.Not Previously Attained Informativeness/Impact Results 9.Accompanying Technical and Social Tool/Changes (to turn informedness into change). If we identify particular values of each of the above parameters of video informativity and combine them into particular video designs, then present to equivalent audiences the same contents (as nearly as can be done in reality) delivered by different designs, and measure short term and long term retention and use outcomes of exposure to the video’s content, we might experimentally demonstrate particular designs that outperform by considerable margins current videos and other designs of this same parameter space. This is a huge job, a huge exploration to undertake. For one thing, finding interesting, powerful, effective values within any one dimension above is a lot of work. Finding such effective values that stay effective with combined with various values along other dimensions is another huge task. Consider this--for each function presented above we have several thinkable means to explore, but beyond that, we can invent new means never seen before in videos of the past, for performing any one informative function. The space of these means to be explored for each function is not trivial, since it includes this invention component. This paper does not present the first such experiments of this exploration--that is for later papers. Rather, this paper presents the space of design parameters to be experimentally explored over coming years.

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