The Perks of Being a Guinea Pig

I spent an hour of my time Thursday morning watching user-created videos, earning a sawbuck and some hearty laughs.

Indiana prof Shaowen Bardzell is currently conducting a user study to:

“…explore people’s subjective interpretation of their emotions when interacting with Internet videos (browsing, selecting, and watching). Since emotions are both biological and socially and culturally constructed and enacted, the study will focus on the pragmatic side of emotions and seek to understand (1) how people’s emotions influence their interactions with videos, and (2) how researchers can design applications that better support users’ emotional needs and desires.

That’s a lot of words for “watch six videos of your choosing and provide some feedback on your emotional state.”

I’m not a consumer of online video as a rule. Usually, what I watch is either referred to me through an email or IM from a friend (or now, with a tweet from SuperDeluxe). Some of the videos in the study were familiar to me by name only, and a couple I had seen, but most were brand new to me. I was drawn to two in particular.

The first was a great little animated music video posted last August, “The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.” The only thing missing for me there was a formal bracket showing how the battle paths of the pop culture icons. It’s a violent cartoon, but most of that comes after Chuck Norris shows up. The second was an excellent parody of a ‘Net culture phenomenon: the picture-a-day videos.

For many online video connoisseurs, the idea of taking a picture of yourself every day to garner YouTube fame started with Ahree Lee‘s 3-year movie on August 11, 2006 (posted a few days earlier on Atom Films). That video was followed two weeks later by Noah Kalina, whose movie covers 2356 Days from January 2000 through July 2006. A few months later, another director posted a photo-a-day movie that was even longer, dating back to 1998. There have been some other similar projects and a number of parodies of the schtick in the interim. The best of the lot, though, is this one:

(NOTE: The YouTube version is of poor quality, so watch it on ebaumsworld.com instead.)

The longest part of Shaowen’s user study was the exit survey, which like everything else was conducted through a nice Flash application. The videos are each only a few minutes long. If you are in the Bloomington area and want a nice hour or so break that gets you ten dollars for watching some amateur TV, contact Dr. Bardzell at affect@indiana.edu to schedule a session. Maybe you’ll become enlightened, too.