[quartz]

Definitely would use this.

Instructional video instead of step-by-step text is a personal pet peeve. I know it's a lot easier to just record a video to show something like "how to replace the battery on a cordless vacuum" or "removing a sink basin nut" but it's often such a painful experience for consumption (watch a moment, pause, scrub back and watch again, pause, continue, pause, all with potentially gloved hands often in tight working spaces).

[bane]

I'm on the other end of this in a way. I think it may come from having to read and write all day every day. Sometimes just having somebody yak at me for a few minutes is useful.

I really enjoy watching instructional videos, especially for recipes. The demo of the cooking techniques is almost always hard to write or talk about, and easy to show.

In the kitchen it works this way for me:

1. Watch the video once or twice all the way through to "learn it" and decide if it's what I want to do.

2. Put together my mise en place and basic prep for the recipe. Learning to do this was a game changer.

3. Finally, put it on my phone or tablet in my kitchen and let it play while I work, it's mostly audio at this point as I've "seen" the content a few times but I'm just listening as if the video is a coach. I'll hit pause at the major steps, and scrub back if I need a refresher on a technique or step.

I've gotten through some very complex dishes this way, and never hit the equivalent rhythm using cookbooks or recipe websites. The audio part of step 3 is really critical to me as it helps me focus on the food rather than remembering all the steps and it's just fills up the background space in my kitchen or act as a coach. The only way it would be better for me is if it automatically paused after each step and I could then ask it "what next?" or "go back two steps, I missed a step" or some other audio prompt.

[dmd]

Your workflow sounds like literal hell to me. I will do anything in my power to get plain text to avoid exactly the experience you are describing!

[sonicanatidae]

They are spending a great deal of time, getting this one thing just right.

Most of us, in the IT world, aren't doing that. We're trying to get through this task quickly, and accurately, before moving on to the next one, so for us, we don't need this level of prep/consideration/review.

I'm with you. It's not my style either, after 30+ years in IT. lol

[aftbit]

Different strokes for different folks.

[xattt]

Greasy strokes on the phone/tablet screen to say the least!

[tshaddox]

It sounds like you're describing edutainment, which I also love, but which is a very different exercise for me than genuinely trying to expedite learning how to do some well-scoped task.

Granted, there's a blurry line here, since I certainly may pick up some useful techniques and knowledge from cooking edutainment content even though I never genuinely aspire to the same level of personal cooking.

[joncalhoun]

People have a mental cap on what text should cost. If someone creates instructional content that provides thousands of dollars in value, they can sell videos for $200+, but a book version is hard to sell over $50, even if both provide the same value. Even for free content it is easier to monetize YouTube than it is to monetize a blog.

If we want people to create more text-based material, it needs to have similar financial incentives.

[sonicanatidae]

I think part of this is how society consumes information. In the 80s, you mostly had books. Sure, there were some video courses, but a majority of the learning was through books.

Now, people consume most of their information in video formats. Think about the rise of Vine, Youtube, TikTok, and the 100s of others out there just like them.

They are growing like weeds, because that's apparently how the public now likes to consume media, info, etc.

[meatmanek]

I assume most of this video bias comes from the ease of monetization (for content creators) on Youtube. That might in turn come from some mental cap held by viewers on the value of text vs. video, but I suspect it has more to do with the number and value of ads that can be shown by the platform. Some random blog platform is going to maybe have inline image ads, while Youtube has unskippable video ads which I assume are valued more by advertisers.

[tshaddox]

That may be a partial explanation, but it only makes the situation worse!

"Oh, but they're only doing it because it will trick people into paying more money."

[xingped]

I have no data to back this up but just taking a stab in the dark - a possible reason might be because people generally tend to prefer learning from someone talking about the subject matter?

I know most all of us here are techies and very used to cracking open books and documentation and text tutorials to teach ourselves stuff, but many people are not like that and especially if you're new to a subject, sometimes books just don't help things to click as well for some reason.

There's probably something to do with the way material is structured and presented differently between talking about it and writing about it, but I wouldn't know what to say about it.

I dunno, just a guess because it's an interesting observation to think about.

[Szpadel]

oh, it depends

I understand and agree with you but there are situations where full video is better anyways.

example from life: I needed to teardown old laptop to replace thermal paste and I was following some image guide it was all fine until one part stuck and I couldn't figure out what was holding it. there was no way to figure that out from description and images, I needed to find video.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that ideally you want both, or maybe hybrid? like step by step guide constructed from short looped videos showing you how to do that single step?

[sonicanatidae]

I generally agree with you. I would appreciate it if the youtubers that do these would just add the list to the text box they write in anyway. That would help a great deal, since all of it would be right there.

Visuals can be useful. I had to look at one just this morning tearing down an old HP Elitebook 8470p. Here I was removing all kinds of screws, when it's just a battery release sliders move, then the entire panel just slides off. doh.

But, most of the time, I just need the list. I don't need a video of someone stepping through some arcane, obscure and rarely needed AD repair. Just gimme the steps and I'll take it from there. :)

[JohnFen]

I agree 100% with this. Having both video and text is ideal, but if it has to be one or the other, text is much better.

[attentive]

Bard can do this. They have youtube extension.

[sonicanatidae]

100% with you on this one. Just give me the list. If I need visuals, I'll chase them down.

[dheera]

Another big annoyance is websites with recipes that do any of the following indcredibly bad UX patterns:

- Big white page not showing any text or images until the entire page and its assets are downloaded, which means if you accidentally click something and go back you have to wait another several seconds for everything to load again

- Pop up GDPR popup while hands are covered in flour and eggs

- Pop up "would you like to subscribe to the newsletter" while hands are covered in sticky sauce

- Pop up "buy this shit for 10% off" with a microscopic X button while something on high heat on the stove

- Not specifying image height and width in CSS so that when user is looking at a piece of text and images above it load, the scrolling position jumps

For these reasons alone I've largely stopped looking at the internet for recipes and turned to physical books, which are much better behaved.

[BizarroLand]

Don't forget the lazy-loading pages that don't properly set their flex box positions so that when you go to click on something a new link pops in at the place you were just about to click that takes you to a different page.

I'm tempted to say that this is a dark pattern because when it happens to me is is almost always a "subscribe", "purchase", or "login" button.

[robocat]

> dark pattern

I wonder how often dark patterns are the result of goal directed A/B testing?

If the goal is set to "did the user click on an advert" - and the A/B changes are fuzzed CSS - then the results would be deviously dark.

[dheera]

Reminds me of how my company is now tracking badge swipe data to try to enforce people going into the office 3 days per week, and sending tickets to managers about their reports who fall short of it.

Someone probably invented it to hit some KPI of number of employees going to the office 3 days per week.

The reality is people are going to the office sick and spreading all kinds of viruses, I often have to take meetings from my car because I can't find a meeting room, among many, many other problems.

But that dude that implemented the system probably got a promotion.

[chedabob]

I've started copying these recipes into Crouton https://crouton.app/

It does a remarkable job at extracting the recipes, and the end result is a consistent experience no matter the source.

[BobaFloutist]

I've been using Paprika https://www.paprikaapp.com/ for much the same thing. It's amazing how useful it is.

[duderific]

Same idea at https://justtherecipe.com - also you can login with Google account and save recipes there.

[mcfedr]

You just described all websites

[incahoots]

Thankfully reader view defeats most of this, though it has it's drawbacks, but the majority of what you need is readily available via this method.