Automating Web Design: A Matter Of Art And Science

How much of web design is art and how much is science? According to German firm EyeQuant, it’s mostly the latter. Fast Company states that they are “using machine learning to train their AI to recognize bad aesthetics and poor website design.” Leveraging eye tracking studies that measure attention, they believe that they can algorithmically predict which websites people prefer.

Let’s move behind website design to think about how we can optimize any online creative. Keyword optimization has already moved from SEO and into social media creation and image optimization isn’t far off with improvements in measurement and computer vision. But don’t worry humans, Creative Directors won’t be outsourced to machines…at least for the time being.

Sticky’s Eye Tracker Measures Ad Attention

Marketers have used impressions and viewability as a proxy for engagement, but the real question remains as to whether or not the consumer actually saw at the ad. Well, it appears eyetracking company, Sticky has created a solution to do just that. By monitoring consumers gaze through a standard webcam, Sticky can quantitatively measure how an ad was viewed. The product has been tested on 350,000 consumers by the likes of P&G among others, and while privacy concerns abound, it could have serious implications for pricing models in the future.

Samsung Galaxy S IV To Incorporate Eye Tracking

In the past few years we’ve seen interfaces becoming more natural, incorporating gesture and speech controls and Samsung’s latest phone will continue that trend. In fact, the Galaxy S IV is expected to leverage eye tracking technology to affect page scroll based on where users are looking. We’ve seen this technology in action from companies like Tobii and Gazehawk but the incorporation with Samsung takes it into the consumer market.