At 7am (10am ET) today I listened to NPR’s hourly 5 minute news update, as I’m wont to do when take the dog out to empty her in the morning. I was struck by the deeper meaning of the update when I looked at the structure of the update, and the proportionate devotion of content to one subject in particular.
It’s of note that at the time I was listening, tornadoes had touched down in several states in the US, with widespread damage and dozens dead between the night before and the time I was listening, plus further expectations that the east coast of should continue to expect possible tornadoes as well as heavy storm activity.
Here’s the order of the stories:
- Dow Jones drops 300 points following the opening of trading
- Oil market speculation
- UK prime minister out of ICU
- Wisconsin Democratic primary manual ballot count
- Deadly storms kill 19 in Georgia, 11 in Mississippi
- Dow Jones drops 300 points following the opening of trading
- Sailor on USS Roosevelt dies, 600 onboard sick with COVID
- Russia joins OPEC cartel in oil production reduction agreement
- Trump speculates reduction agreement to double
This blog is not about media analysis, but as a VUI designer and a writer, it’s hard for me to let go of a few things that struck me.
- Since we tune out what we feel we’ve heard before or already know, excellently written and deployed messages stimulate the attention with novelty, or the appearance of being novel. The news of the OPEC agreement is from April 9, 4 days ago, so it’s not news. Here’s OPEC’s press release.
- Repetition is a device for reinforcing or emphasizing a message. NPR repeats the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping two times, with three separate pieces on oil markets, a subset of the average that the Dow Jones measures, for a total of 5 separate mentions of
- A rule of thumb for VUI designers is to place the most important information in a message at the beginning and the end, the beginning closest to the user’s startle reflex, and the end being the information a user’s most likely to retain, if anything is. While there are ongoing weather-related states of emergency in several states, and as a result people may be getting news from unusual sources, like podcasts or a smart assistant on their phone, which is how I took this in. This information is the 5th item mentioned.
- Another strategy for reinforcing importance while keeping attention is variation. Because selective attention is a strategy we use in every aspect of our lives, it’s second-nature to tune out and then pay attention when something grabs our attention. By referring to market updates 5 separate ways, if you have tuned out of any of the previous 4, you will still gain some part of the intended message, perhaps enough to interpret the entirety of the message without having heard most of it. In an IVR, instructions of what button to push are a good example of where we might focus our attention and scan backwards ever so slightly in memory to parse what the instruction was for.
Given that NPR states that their priority “is to create a more informed public, one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas, and culture within the United States and across the globe,” the only reasonable interpretation for a listener to make is that the markets, especially the oil markets, are extremely important to Americans.
This is despite the price of consumer oil and oil-products having no close connection to the cost of bulk crude, and oil production employing on a small fraction of Americans, vs retail and food service, at roughly 25% each. Half of Americans say they own stocks, while 11% live at or below the poverty line. If the audience is all Americans, in our estimation the half of the American working population that works in these industries is unlikely to own any stock or have much interest in the market. Why is this the focus?
A big part of my job is to pay attention, and in that paying attention, identify emergent messages and themes. How do you deliver a message so a user is confident it’s true? How do you deliver an instruction so that its impossible to interpret except one way? How do you create a belief that the agent delivering the message is helpful, friendly, and has your interests at heart?
I don’t wish to give an interpretation of what the takeaway of all of this actually is, to be clear. The news is delivered hourly in this format, so there’s a lot of updates. My context is but one, so take all of this with a grain of salt. I walked the dog for 20 minutes and took in my news for the day.
And, you know, half the time, I’m not even paying attention. I’m keeping Micah from eating mud, or picking up her crap.
(In case the link above is out of date, here’s the update I’m talking about, for context.)