Personalizing Videos Helps You Create Great User Experience
Can you believe that we can process visuals at a staggering 60,000 times faster than text? According to Forrester Research, employees are 75% more likely to watch videos than reading documents, emails or Web articles. So there goes employees dozing in the middle of a bullet-point presentation or when reading a very long manual!
Personalization For A Better Learning Experience
In today's world, everything is getting personalized. For both products and services, the old mantra of ‘one size fits all’ is getting left behind, and the eLearning industry is not left out in this race for personalization.
The term ‘personalization’ has been doing its rounds for quite some time now in the eLearning industry. Personalization is mainly employed to increase a better User Experience, thereby increasing the user engagement through practical, innovative ideas.
There are several ways to personalize the videos for the users. It is essential that you not rush through and implement everything at the same time. Instead, pick a few personalizing ideas that are relevant to the context and purpose of your course and more importantly, keep the users as the focal point for all your personalization ideas.
Personalizing Video Content
Depending on the user preferences, you can increase user engagement by including certain elements to facilitate better retention of the content. You can also add animated videos to the content as examples for the audience to further engage their interest. You can also edit the duration of the video based on the type of audience. While some may prefer longer videos, others may prefer microlearning through bite-sized videos. Therefore, you should use the type of content your audience prefers in the videos and tailor it accordingly. It is also essential to have a transcript for all your videos.
For an existing customer, you can find their preferences based on historical data. If they are new users, you can match their demographics with the historical data of similar audiences and use a few of your innovative ideas to create personalized videos.
Now on to the important questions:
- Do you need to personalize videos depending on the demographics of the users?
- Or, do you need to personalize the content of videos based on the relevancy to the users?
The answer is both.
Personalization Based On Demographics
1. Language
Customizing videos based on demographics starts with the language. Although many believe that English is the universal language, only 25% of internet users worldwide use English. The remaining people use the internet in their native languages.
It's no surprise that people tend to understand and relate more to the content when it is spoken in their native language, which also improves knowledge retention. For example, if you are creating a video for safety courses that are going to be used by factory workers in Asia, making the entire video in English is going to be futile as not many on the continent can understand English. That's why, if necessary, you can translate the content in the video to the native language of the audience.
When most of your audience speaks English, you can personalize the videos based on the different English accents, such as British English, American English, or Australian English. Most importantly, the vocabulary used should match with what is used by the target audience.
2. Content
The content in the video, like the anecdotes or the examples used, can be customized to match the culture of the audience.
Let’s take the above example again. If you are joking about a local cop show in Brooklyn to factory workers in Asia, wouldn’t it seem totally out of context? The examples you use must blend in with the audience for whom you are developing the video. Whenever possible, try to limit any local slang, jargon, or references that could be understood only by a certain segment of people.
Personalization Based On The Relevancy
When there is a need to create a video on a common topic for the entire organization. How will you go about it?
Create a single, common video for everyone?
Wrong.
Targeting a section of the audience and creating videos just for them will be relevant and useful.
In the case of the safety video for a factory in Asia, you can’t teach everyone with the same video. Depending on their responsibilities, people's roles during an emergency may vary. A separate video for safety on the shop floor for the workers, one for the steps that can be taken by the supervisors, and one for the managers will be appropriate and effective.
How Can You Personalize Existing Video Content?
Do you have to start from scratch to personalize your content? This is the biggest question that must be in the minds of those who already have tons of content they can't afford to remake.
If you have existing videos, you can still take some steps to personalize it.
- You can translate the audio to a different language and in the process, change the relevant content according to the audience.
- If your audience prefers shorter videos, you can easily edit the existing video into smaller sections.
- You can include small portions in an existing video with animations, images, and practical examples and convert it into a brand-new video.
- You can take an old video and add or modify some content to customize it for people of different designations in an organization.
- If your videos have major portions of voice-over content, you can easily edit the audio with any local jargon or references to a particular demographic.
- Do not use the same old video with obsolete content. Keep updating the content of the video according to the new changes and developments in the industry.
Personalize content that resonates well with your target users, and get them captivated with your highly effective and relevant videos!
