U4 Lesson 1: Interactive Media

Lesson 1 and 2: Interactive Media

What does the term interactive mean?

- People can engage with it

Why are products interactive?

• Products that are able to engage their audience may become more successful
• To engage with an audience

What interactive functions do you like to engage with?

- Customisation 

What are the purposes of interactive products?

• To engage the target audience
• Entertainment
• Marketing
• Promotional
• Advertising
• Inform

Purpose	Example of interactive element
Promotional	Game advertisements - Games include a playable aspect of their advertisement at the end
Advertising	Animations - hovering over an animation to make it play
Marketing	Hyperlinks - People can click and it take you to the product
Entertainment	Gaming - making a character run and jump on a game
Social Media	Staickers on Instagram stories - Polls on an Instagram story
Inform
Virtual reality
News

Interactive videos in 2021

• New and exiting mode
• Successful mode of marketing
• Videos where the audience participated in the viewing experience 
• Deepens the experience and an immersive experience
• Give customers the information they need
• Taking passive audiences and making them passive
• Boost viewing by 47% and increases purchaser intent 9x
• Conversion rate of around 11%

Uses for Interactive Videos

• Increasingly used for immersive shopping experiences
• Proven to generate higher conversion rates
• Ted baker - Allows people to buy products in their videos
• Life Saver made interactive videos that let people improve their decision making skills

Key features of interactive video

• Hotspots - areas in an interactive video that are clickable
• 2 types of hotspot - Static hotspots: Hotspots that are anchored to a spot in the video and doesn’t move - Sticky hotspots: Hot spots that stick to a person or an item int he video, tend to do a lot better in terms of engagement, 9x more impactful than static.
• Overlays - pop ups which appear when a hotspot is clicked on
• Branching - give viewers the option to control the narrative - provide audience with a personalised viewing experience - boost conversion rates
• 360º viewing - much more immersive as viewers can see form any angle

YouTube

Social Media, Entertainment, Inform, News

Youtube is laid out in a way in which videos recommended for you are displayed in a gallery design in which users scroll down for more and more videos recommended for them. Then, there is a search bar on the top which users interact with and can type in specific videos or topics that they would like to interact with. As well as the search bar, on top of the screen there are a plethora of other interactive features, such as the YouTube Logo which will take you back to this home screen when clicked, a speech dictation button which allows users to speak into the computer instead of type, a button which allows users to upload their own videos to the platform, a bell which allows users to see any notifications that they previously missed, and also their profile picture, which when pressed creates a drop down menu showing all other pages you’re able to reach from that widget. Just under these icons, there is a horizontal list of different genres personalised to each account. This list is interactive as users can click on a topic they are interested in and then be shown an array of videos linking to said topic in the same gallery layout design as the home page. 

Another interactive feature that YouTube offers, is when you hover over the thumbnails of videos you find interesting, the video starts playing in its entirety, however there is no sound while this action is taking place.

On this homepage, there is also a hamburger button, when clicked, a side bar pops out with numerous other interactive buttons. These buttons include:

Home - Which takes you to the home page

Explore - Which takes you to the explore page of YouTube

Shorts - Takes you to tiktok like short videos which users can scroll through

Subscriptions - Takes you to videos made by channels that you are subscribed to

Library - Shows you all your watch history, watch later, and also liked videos

History - Shows you all your previously watched videos

Your Videos - Takes you to a page which displays all the videos you’ve made, also takes you to the creators studio which you can also access by clicking on your profile picture

Watch Later - Gives you all the videos you’ve added to your watch later (You can click watch later in the top right corner when hovering on a video if you want to watch them at another time)

Liked videos - Shows you all the videos you have liked

‘Show More’ Button - When this interactive drop down menu is clicked, it shows you all the playlists you have added to your library

Subscriptions list - When you scroll down on this list further, you’re introduced to the list of accounts you are subscribed to, when this exceeds a certain amount, a ‘show more’ button is displayed which when clicked shows you the rest of the channels you subscribed to 

The settings, help, feedback and report history is also available through this side bar menu at the bottom.

When a video is clicked, and you start watching, below the video are numerous more interactive elements. These elements include:

Like Button

Dislike Button

Share Button

Clip

Save

Report

Transcript

Subscribe - and when this button is clicked, another button appears which allows users to turn on notifications for that channel 

Lastly, YouTube allows many types of videos to be uploaded to the platform such as 360º videos, VR videos and also videos which use branching by allowing video creators to put hotspots to other videos onto of their videos which can lead to other branches in the narrative.

Comparing Interactive Media

Interactive Media	Purpose	Components/Features
Amazon	Online shopping, watching shows, and also music	Search bar Buttons Videos Ratings Photos
Twitter	An online micro-blog where people can share thoughts, videos and photos whilst simultaneously seeing other peoples	Buttons Sound Comments Videos Photos Search bar Hyperlinks Polls
Wordle	A word guessing game. Entertainment website and also educational	Buttons Animations Hotspots
Instagram	Social media, sharing pictures and looking at other peoples posts	Buttons Photos  Videos Hotspots Hyperlinks Comments Polls
Netflix	Watching shows and films	Photos Videos Buttons Animations

Analysing and interactive product