If I am looking for how to do something and get directed to a youtube video, I will not be watching that video. I can read and comprehend and I can do it really fast–I fucking loathe the entire professional youtuber “thing,” the introductory part, the minutes they waste slowly easing into the instructions, their stupid fucking voice–I hate all of it.
Just give me words. Just put words on my screen. For fuck’s sake.
exceptions: things that naturally translate well into video–instructions for performing repairs on a car, for example.
P.S. If you have a potentially interesting product/website/whatever but you only provide information about it in video format, I am going to ignore it.
A picture says more than a thousand words. Unless that picture is animated, with speech, because in that case it transfers maybe 5 bits of information. A minute.
Text supplies words as quickly as you can read them — 200–300 per minute, usually.
Speech (like in a talk show or lecture) supplies words roughly as fast as can be spoken — 60–120 words per minute.
There are things almost impossible to explain in words, though. Usually complex spatial relationships. There are things impossible to explain in pictures as well. Usually movement.
I feel the same on media sites. Give me the news. In words. I do not want to watch a video of your talking heads wasting time bantering before giving me a soundbite. Please give me words to read thankyougoodbye.
I am totally onboard with using moving pictures to show how to perform an action, however.
Mooncustafer 