The Broadcast Mentality
Why Commercial Websites Still Imitate Television
4/16/1999
by Glenn Kurtz
URL:
http://www.ahrf.com/guides/industry/199904/0416kurtz.html
As web designers,
we are participating in a profound historical transition, from a society
mediated by mass production and mass communication, to one mediated by distributed
computer networks. Just as machine production and telecommunications revolutionized
pre-industrial society, redefining on a mass scale how people worked, consumed,
and pursued happiness, so digital technology will revolutionize the ideas,
attitudes, and institutions of the industrial era, redefining our activities
on the scale of the user.
In this moment of transition, however, the greatest obstacle to success
is often what was most successful before. Most businesses, rather than changing
how they think about their activities to reflect the emerging digital reality,
press the new technology into the service of old ideas. Even with an extensive
and expensive web presence, most businesses have not considered how the computer
can transform the conventional relation between producers and consumers that
has characterized commerce for the last 100 years.
What stands in the way of real innovation is not the complexity of digital
technology, but the inability to break commercial habits established during
the broadcast era. These habits, which I call the broadcast mentality, still
influence the corporate approach to web design, often resulting in an unconscious
imitation of television. But computer networks differ fundamentally from broadcast
networks, and effective design in the new medium must take advantage of this
difference. The decisive question for web producers is this: Do you see your
audience as receivers of your information, or as producers of their own?
The answer to this question separates network-savvy design from the broadcast
mentality.
Television and the Broadcast Mentality
The relations between producer and consumer established
during the era of mass production and mass communication are symbolized most
clearly by television. Here, a producer broadcasts a product to a mass audience,
whose role is solely to receive it. The technology of television enforces
these roles by dividing the capacity to broadcast and to receive among different
devices. The home TV set is a reception device, and no matter how many channels
are available, or how high the definition of the picture, the only role a
TV set allows its users is that of receiver.
The broadcast relation between producers and consumers encompasses not only
broadcast media, but also most mass produced consumer products. A consumer
searching for a dishwasher, a music CD, or for lingerie has just as little
opportunity to influence the nature of the available products as a television
viewer has to influence the available programs. In the broadcast era, both
consumer and viewer are understood as receivers of products aimed at a mass
audience. Although there are mass feedback mechanisms - the Nielsen ratings,
for example, or sales figures and customer surveys - these merely register
the responses of receivers. They are not a means by which consumers can influence
products. Just like a television program, the only choice a mass produced
product offers the consumer is to accept or reject it. This relation is symbolized
by broadcast technology, but it is embodied in every form of commercial exchange
developed during the broadcast era.
Of course, the unequal relation between producer and consumer is not arbitrary.
On the contrary, the broadcast relation established and enforced by mass production
and mass communication is often the most economically efficient compromise
between the needs of the producer and the needs of the consumer that this
technology allows. At the turn of the 20th century, these compromises were
utterly revolutionary in scope and significance. Thanks to them, we live
in a society of plenty, enjoying a cornucopia of goods unparalleled in history.
But the commercial compromises made possible by the technology of mass production
and mass communication are not eternal. Indeed, by altering the dynamics between
producers and consumers, digital technology makes these compromises obsolete.
It is at this moment, however, that we encounter the broadcast mentality.
While digital technology erodes the foundation for the commercial compromises
of the broadcast era, they persist as unexamined habits influencing how we
design and implement online commercial transactions. Instead of discovering
the new forms of commercial relation digital technology makes possible, businesses
employ the new tools to reproduce familiar patterns. The broadcast mentality
thus describes the failure to make the conceptual leap from the era of mass
production to the digital era.
The Broadcast Mentality and Website Design
According to the broadcast mentality:
· Producers offer finished products to a mass audience,
whose role as receivers is to accept or
reject them.
· Every broadcast message is a form of mass marketing,
and so must serve the broadcaster's
established goals.
· The consumer's freedom is manifested through
choice, by deciding which product to buy.
All of the broadcaster's experience in the marketplace makes these attributes
of the broadcast relation between producers and consumers seem like the essential
structure of the consumer economy. When digital technology arrives, therefore,
the question that producers ask is: how can it be best implemented to facilitate
the broadcast relation? Like television, direct marketing, or a retail store,
the Internet is thus understood as a way to bring finished products to the
attention of the mass public. And when the Internet is understood in this
way, a few basic styles of website are the result:
· the advertising site;
· the marketing site;
· and the retail site.
The Advertising Site (Nike)
Following the pattern established by television, advertising
websites seek to attract attention and to create an aura for the broadcaster
and the product. Nike.com, for example, is elaborate, expensive, and essentially
a television ad. It does not answer any questions, does not provide any service,
and offers no activity for the user except identification with celebrity
athletes. The company has a message to broadcast, and the audience's only
function is to receive it. The Internet is thus understood as a broadcast
medium, and the computer as a reception device. In other words, since this
site is patterned after a television ad, it incorporates all the limitations
of that medium, while ignoring the possibilities offered by the Internet.
Without altering the goal of this website - to attract attention - it would
be vastly improved if it treated the user as a producer, rather than a receiver,
of information. As a simple example, Nike could help users create a personalized
exercise program. This would still advertise Nike products, but it would also
acknowledge that people actually use them.
The Marketing Site (Tupperware, CompareNet)
At marketing sites, the consumer is understood as
a customer who may have questions or problems and may require assistance
in choosing a product. These websites therefore function like sales representatives
rather than television ads. Tupperware.com, for example, boasts product descriptions,
gift ideas, press releases, and a limited catalogue. But while the company
is symbolized by the enthusiastic community of a Tupperware party, the website
is unable to translate this community spirit into a useful design. The site
provides considerable quantities of information, but from the user's perspective,
the information is inert: there is no way for customers to act on it. For
the company, this means the site is not a very astute salesman, since it can
answer only very limited questions and lacks the ability to make a sale.
As with the advertising site, tupperware.com unthinkingly adopts the limitations
of one-way mass communication. Yet here too, without changing the site's goal
- to provide product information - Tupperware could greatly increase the
value of its site by treating the consumer as a user. By hosting an online
Tupperware party, and creating a database to answer specific questions, the
company would provide responsive, rather than broadcast, information.
A marketing site like CompareNet offers a compelling example of responsive
web design. Like a department store, this site places similar products side
by side, helping the consumer evaluate their features, prices, and options.
Thus, unlike the Tupperware and Nike sites, CompareNet acts as an information
broker rather than a broadcaster. By allowing its users to compare the products
of different manufacturers, CompareNet incorporates the role of knowledgeable
salesman in its functionality. This makes the consumer more than just a receiver.
Customers can now ask specific questions and the site can answer them: What
other models are available? How do they differ? It should be obvious that
functionality of this kind is a far more effective strategy on the web than
marketing slogans.
The Retail Site (The Gap)
The most useful category of commercial website is
the retail site or online store. But once again, the majority of online stores
are designed to satisfy the broadcast mentality, rather than to exploit the
way digital technology affects the relation between producers and consumers.
At the Gap's online store, consumers select from the same array of clothing
available at physical Gap stores. But from the consumer's perspective, the
Gap online does not differ at all from a mail-order catalogue. While the Gap's
store employs some sophisticated functionality - including "Instant Style,"
a flip-book-like feature that lets users combine different tops and bottoms,
and a zoom mode that allows users to examine selected items more closely
- still, these features only hint at what might be possible if designers ceased
reproducing broadcast era forms. While the Gap's online store may be convenient
in some circumstances, it still embodies the broadcast relation between producers
and consumers.
If the Gap thought of the web as a medium of communication, rather than
as a broadcast medium, it might invite its users to suggest new clothing
combinations, not simply receive the Gap's suggestions. Taken to its logical
conclusion, this might involve a form of mass customization, where users
could select customized styles, fabrics, cuts, and sizes. With a website
that acted as a medium of communication, instant style might then mean more
than matching compatible products. The site would no longer just broadcast
what the manufacturer happens to produce. Instead, web-based functionality
would assist the user in defining the specific products they want. A responsive,
user-specific website like this operates on the scale of the individual user.
Above all, it strikes a commercial compromise between producers and consumers
impossible for the broadcast mentality to conceive.
From Consumer to User
The digital revolution is revolutionary for businesses
because it alters the dynamics of commercial interaction, shifting the emphasis
from the producer to the user. The design principles in this medium therefore
differ fundamentally from those for broadcast technology. From sites like
CompareNet, and from the improvements I have suggested for Nike, Tupperware,
and the Gap, we can derive a few basic starting points:
· The user's freedom is expressed in activity,
rather than choice.
· The goal of online marketing is not to persuade,
but to facilitate.
· Producers provide functionality, helping users
create the product.
The broadcaster is always telling the receiver what to buy. But network-savvy
design demands sites that listen and respond to users. For these sites, users
are producers - not just receivers - of information. This may seem like a
simple distinction. But the shift from a broadcast to a responsive approach
to web design has the power to transform completely the inherited conventions
at the heart of current business models, advertising, product design, and
online commerce.
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