Week 8- Interface and Attention Span: Who else is addicted to Serial?

While doing the readings this week, I got stuck on the idea of attention span. What makes viewers stick with content? In Shneiderman’s “Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design,”  he describes ways to improve the usability of a site.  These eight rules have much to do with consistency and ease of navigation.  They seemed straight foreword and common sense: it would seem counter productive to not follow through with rules such as “offer simple error handling” or “reduce short term memory load.” Even though Shneiderman’s argument was centered around interface of website, it got me thinking how this interface applies to other digital mediums, such as podcasts.

In looking at The Knotted Line and Freedom’s Ring: King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech, I was struck by how these sites transcended the traditional notion of a website.  Navigation was guided in a way which provided narrative, yet was unique and engaging. Both sites were multimedia and though they provided a database of information for the viewer, it was clear that there first objective was to tell an engaging story.  Perhaps story, told through effective interface, is what produces attention span.

A chart from The Bold Italic showing different “hypothetical” tweets about the podcast, Serial

Serial is a new podcast produced by WEBZ Chicago and This American Life. As the name suggests, it is a “serial” and tells the story of a teen murder incrementally, one week at a time.  This podcast series has been widely successful and, of course, highly controversial.   There has been a lot of media attention to the series, specifically  as to why this podcast is so successful?  There has been much debate regarding the morality of the content, suggesting that the popularity of the podcast lies in an intrinsic human desire for voyeurism and the “unsavory.”  While I do not feel that I am educated enough to take on those arguments, I do want to say that I think a lot of Serial’s success may lie in interface.

A “parody” infographic from The Bold Italic about Serial’s popularity

I think that applying Shneiderman’s “Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design” to podcasts says a lot about the success of podcasts in recent years: they follow Shniederman’s rules pretty closely.  Podcasts “strive for consistency” in the sense that they are, like television shows, produced and distributed on a weekly basis.  They “enable frequent users to shortcuts” by virtue of their interface: pause, fast-foreward, rewind.  Podcasts are available at the users desire and can be archived for later use.  They “offer informative feedback” by the virtue of their existence.  Podcasts frequently, like traditional radio, answer listener questions and clarify in later episodes.  Podcasts are adapted to how the listener dictates the experience. Podcasts are “designed for closure” in that they have only a single function: the user listens to the podcast and then the podcast is over.   Podcasts “permit easily action reversal” because they can be listened, or rewinded, as many times as an individual desires. The “support inner locus of control” in that they are simple to use and feel easy to master: anyone can essentially download and listen to a podcast. (Serial even has a webpage to guide you through the process) In conclusion, good podcasts “reduce short term memory load.”  Most podcasts do not exceed an hour in length and are filled with “information recalls,” the purpose of a podcast is not to make the listener memorize the information, but rather to entertain.

In looking at a close analysis of “podcast interface,” I am perhaps a little convinced that popular entertainment has a lot to do with easily access.  Content is obviously king, but perhaps interface has a lot more to do with it than we think?  What about interface of discussion? Would we be talking about Serial as much without twitter or other social medias? I am curious if anyone else got hung up on the idea of interface behind “on demand” entertainment.  (Also, is anyone else listening to Serial? I am a little obsessed.)