Uncovering users' emotions
30th November 2011
This interactive exercise on iMotions was done as part of our World Usability Day event held at User Vision's head office.
We all know that emotions drive customer’s decisions. What is unknown is how to gather that fragile and short-lived data?
This year we looked at how cutting edge software could help identifying and acting upon users’ emotional responses to marketing materials.
What we looked at
We asked our participants to watch two different advertisements of a new Volkswagen Beetle.
While participants were watching adverts their facial expressions were tracked and analysed by a webcam and dedicated software. Then, we asked participant to comment on which advertisement they liked more and why. It was reviled, that the advert with an animated beetle was preferred by 57% of tested participants (see”wordle” for preferred advert characteristics).
Furthermore, emotional response testing has shown that, as predicted, advertisement that elicited more happiness on the respondents’ faces was the one they preferred.
Outcomes
With use of the newest development from ThirdSight, we were able to track in real time how much of each emotion (happy, surprised, angry, disgusted, afraid, sad) was expressed throughout the watch time and we obtained an emotional profile of a favourite advert.
This new technology offers emotions recognition that is:
- Captured in real – time
- Unobtrusive
- Automatic
We would like to thank Acuity ETS Limited for letting us trial this new software and we are looking forward to using EmoVision in future.
What can you do next?
- Read some more usability and accessibility articles.
- Evaluate your internal search and the general usability of your site through usability testing.
- Attend one of our usability training courses.
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This article was written by Anna Basista. Anna is a User Experience Consultant of User Vision, a usabilityand accessibility consultancy that helps clients gain a competitive advantage through improved ease of use.
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