Tag Archives: 2.0

Is clicktracking the new eyetracking?

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A couple of months ago I wrote a post to point out my personal view on what was considered the low cost alternative to eyetracking: clickrtracking, via a web 2.0 application called Crazy Egg.

My post raised some buzz that eventually lent to an invitation from the Crazy Egg crew to their private beta program. I was happy to accept since I was so curious on the effectiveness of the results.

To summarize my position (disclaimer: the company I work for sells Eye-tracking services):

  • You should care of what your users sees MORE then of what they click (otherwise you won’t be able to figure out why they haven’t clicked on certain links);
  • The users interactions with a web site/interface shouldn’t be summarized to just their clicks;
  • Crazy Egg is a cool app for zero-budget websites who care fo some more information on their users’ activity;
  • Even though Crazy Egg disappears when compared to Eye Tracking technology it totally stands over all the other log analyzer softwares.

After joining the beta testers group I tried Crazy Egg first on this site (too few clicks) and then on the HOTMC.COM web site homepage, collecting a total amount of 3432 clicks in 10 days.

Have I changed my mind? IS click-tracking the NEW eye-tracking?

Well. no.

Crazyegg: the future for statistics? HeatmapHOTMC.COM Homepage heatmap

As you can see from the above pictures (click on them to zoom in) the results on click hot areas reported (on the left) are completely different from gaze hot areas.

Questions such as:

  • Is my logo placement effective (e.g. Is my logo seen/perceived)?
  • Is the top-left menu perceived as the main navigation widget?
  • Is the design of the central (main) column effective?

remain sadly unanswered in the left image but find some anwers on the right one (the eye tracking one, so to say).

You can also see how click behaviours differ from sight behaviours: you don’t click everything you’ve seen and – interestingly – one of the least seen elements on the page (the Hotboard link nearly the base of the right most column) is the MOST clicked (I can give explanation on this if interested, just leave a note in the comments).

To conclude I’ll say that – where affordable – eye tracking remains the best way to user/reality check you designs (as said before Tobii eye tracking systems record the clicks too) but Crazy Egg is probably the best statistic visualization tool I’ve ever seen (a whole lot more then Webtrends) and let you discover some interesting data on your users’ click behaviours (in the above case we discovered that our users used the HOTMC.COM site to access our community forums).

Second Architecture for Second Life

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Some of teh buildings on Myrsine IslandGabetti sponsored a very interesting initiative by the Italian editor Meltemi who launched a pitch to build its premises in Second Life.

A lot of designers worked hard to build up a whole lot of buildings that will cover the Myrsine Island in the next few days: you can navigate non-spaces with gas walls or 18th century buildings or nature-like projects; you choose!

You can take a look at the building by entering the Myrsine Island in Second Life or you can take a look at the buildings pictured here.

A nice machinima has been shooted too

Mash-up camp live blogging

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I’m at the Polaris Centre in Pula, near Cagliari in the marvellous island of Sardinia, to speak at a research-driven event named Mash-up camp organized by the guys at CRS4. The event is based on the Mash-up and spacial web applications subject and its aim is to animate and shake the local companies on the subject of innovation and research.

I’m going to live blog each event (surprisingly I’m the only guy I see just two guys – yours truly included – with a laptop connected to the open wi-fi lan here).

Stefano Pezzi – Core Soluzioni Informatiche

Stefano comes from Bologna, his company , CORE, is partnering with CRS4 (who’s hosting the seminar) some other companies in Sardinia to work at the SIT project for the Regione Sardegna.

The SIT project aims at the creation a database to host and communicate geographical data of the Sardinia Region giving the chance to use these data in touristic and city planning applications.

Stefano’s presentation is very VERY technical (probably too much, IMHO) he describe the whole layer structure of the SIT app and the usage possibilities. The whole application is based on standards both W3C and ISO while Stefano admints that some of the services aren’t standards yet such as the tools for path retrieval and the tiled map service.

The intersting thing is that they developed a Javascript API set to interface outside applications with the SIT framework: when the project started Google Maps (and its API) weren’t on the market and they wanted to build something that would have been reusable and extendable. Nice move! (but what about porting the APIs to something more compliant with the current de facto standard?).

Stefano Sanna – Beeweeb

Slide

Stefano immediately starts with a humorous intro on himself (his a friend, and I can assure his ALWAYS a laughable guy) and then introduce the difference between Mobile Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0.

He says tha if we speak about Web 2.0 is because Web 1.0 existed, so since we speak about Mobile 2.0 it is because mobile 1.0… existed? sure? Who really used WAP? NOBODY! With wap we were entusiasts with the devices not with the applications; we were just trying mobile!

Web 2.0 is about building a platform: develop applications that can be mashed-up together; Mobile web 2.0 is uding Web 2.0 on mobile devices (eg. widsets); Mobile 2.0 means having native apps on the mobile devices that uses web 2.0 services and dedicated sensors.

What is now a barrier for a lot of applications (eg streaming on Mobile) is the cost of traffic; the mobile companies are now fully aware of this and are about to mass release flat mobile connections. So once the costs of connection won’t be a problem any more Mobile web 2.0 can really arise only if user experience and developing costs will be (at least) comparable.

The next step in mobile applications is to transform monodirectional phisical tags (such as Shotcodes) to bi-directional phisical tags users could write and modify (imagine a bi-dir tag at the supermarket were the choice of the product becomes social).

Marco Guiso – Interoperabile
Marco starts talking about openGIS, a system to create HTTP requests for geodata. This is another highly technical speech: I start doubting I’ll be able to properly blog the talk.

Marco’s aim wa to build a software that could “cannibalize” geodata available on the web from different sources. To do this he used AJAX, some OGG web services (SITR, Landsat5, 3D Marine, etc.) and Google maps.

Now it’s my turn to give a talk. See you later!

Matteo Penzo - Mobup