The question is, what is the optimal, the best, the most perfect library tutorial we can make? For example, if we want to produce a video tutorial on how to use a database, should it be a comprehensive one that shows all the features of the database? Or should it be a something really concise and short? Or something in between? To answer that question, a sensory analysis story comes to mind.
Sensory analysis is the science of evoking, measuring, analyzing, and interpreting responses to products (which includes physical products, services, and information) using the five senses (sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste). It originated from food science and large corporations nowadays rely on sensory scientists to help them research and develop their products, anything from food, to shampoo, to the leather used in car seats. But what does sensory analysis have to do with making the perfect library tutorial?
Below is that really interesting sensory analysis story, told by Malcolm Gladwell (what a fantastic storyteller!) at a TED Talk (which was adapted from an article he wrote for The New Yorker). It may contain the answer to making the perfect tutorial.
Just as there is no such thing as the optimal Diet Pepsi, but optimal Diet Pepsis, perhaps there is no such thing as an optimal tutorial video, but optimal tutorial videos. If we segment our students by discipline and class for so many our services, why not make different tutorials for different market segments. Perhaps we could go even further than just segmentng them by discipline or class, but also by their study habit, personality, or ambition, e.g. ”A” students who want to study everything, last minute crammers (this would probably be the biggest segment), visual learners… etc. What this means is, we need to know our users. This is nothing new. We have been trying to do that for a while now. But are we knowing the right things about them?
To take a cue from sensory analysis, I would love to see us make multiple versions of a tutorial and see how our students feel about them. (If anything, it would give us a chance to really practice our video-making skills). We could even be outrageously inventive when we make these tutorials. As Howard Moskowitz has found out, people don’t know what they like if what they like doesn’t yet exist.
