It's time to upgrade - Reader Response

Multimedia... but why?

In this post Mark Luckie talks about an ad that he saw in Complex magazine showing a timeline of Calvin Klein. He says ““They should have made that into a multimedia presentation," I thought. I then paused and asked myself why. Why would this already nicely designed info graphic need the interactive treatment? “(1000 Words)

He then talks about how there are so many sources of news available on the web that users are able to find there information from just skimming. I know I personally do a lot of skimming and manage to find all the appropriate material to have a good attitude on a subject. Creating multimedia packages only gets users more involved rather than text based. People are actually interacting with the content creating a clearer exemplar that will stick in their minds. This isn’t saying that text is bad it’s just people now a days would much rather watch a movie than read a book. “In the end, the most important thing is that interactive news stories encourage the reader to walk away with a greater understanding of the concept presented before them and encourage a larger audience to do so.” (1000 Words)

This only makes me think about what websites could be looking like in the future. Currently I am designing a website for my fraternity Chi Phi and I am thinking about re-making the entire thing now. Rather than having a bunch of text based information posted all around on the website create informative videos for each page describing the category of that page. I feel that this would attract more viewers to the site because they would have to scroll through a bunch of information to find what they need. I can see many sites transforming to make them more interactive for users.
With the way technology is advancing today I wouldn’t be surprised if many news sites converted to video clips and interactive flash games to tell the story in a different way. It really makes me wonder if there is ever going to be a time where we go paperless.