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Measuring Frustration on the Post Office Website with EEG

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

Eye tracking a user finding out when the last christmas postage day for a package of known dimensions and also getting an idea of cost. User struggles with terminology (it’s classed as a large letter, not a parcel) and finding out costs once they had learned which size category the package was in. User’s brainwaves were monitored using an modern EEG headset, clearly showing periods of frustration.

Learn more about emotion response analysis for neuromarketing here: http://www.simpleusability.com/services/eeg/

Eye Tracking Smurfs (with some brainwave analysis too)

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

Eye Tracking with Emotion Response Analysis

Emotion Response AnalysisEmotion Response Analysis (ERA) uses the latest in unobtrusive brainwave measurement technology to listen in on the brains natural electrical signals, measuring excitement, frustration and engagement. Given that up to 95% of our brain’s processing occurs in the subconscious these signals are indicators of real feelings and emotions. This will help product designers, web professionals and insight managers to better understand what is really driving decisions and how they can change products to better appeal to their consumers.

Read more about ERA here.

Introducing a new ERA for Market Research

Monday, December 6th, 2010

Emotion Response AnalysisThey first watched your eyes and they now read your mind, because observing 70% of the body’s sense receptors through eye tracking just wasn’t enough.

SimpleUsability have just taken delivery of a state of the art EEG Brainwave Monitor to form a new ERA (Emotion Response Analysis) market research service for design testing.

Emotion Response Analysis (ERA) uses the latest in unobtrusive brainwave measurement technology to listen in on the brains natural electrical signals, measuring excitement, frustration and engagement. Given that up to 95% of our brain’s processing occurs in the subconscious these signals are indicators of real feelings and emotions. This will help product designers, web professionals and insight managers to better understand what is really driving decisions and how they can change products to better appeal to their consumers. (more…)

Mercedes Eye Tracking Consumers

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

consumer research eye tracking glassesReal world eye tracking is finally getting the attention it deserves. Recent innovations in wearable eye trackers means research participants no longer have to carry heavy laptops in rucksacks as the walk around in the real world – they just pop on some glasses and just carry an ipod sized data recorder. We were the first agency in the world trusted to use the latest eye tracking glasses for commercial research from Tobii.

Here’s a great video of how Mercedes are using eye tracking glasses in their design process and market research. Unsure about the value of eye tracking? Why not read our article about using eye tracking in market research.

we observe them, what’s looked at first, how long does the glance linger on certain features or in what order do they look at things. (more…)

SimpleUsability to host Northern User Experience Meet Up 22nd November

Wednesday, November 10th, 2010

On the 22nd November SimpleUsability is due to host the Northern User Experience Meet Up from 7pm until 9pm.  Throughout the year the event is held in either Manchester or over in Leeds respectively, but we are proud to announce that we will sponsor the November edition and hope to follow this with many more.

The event will be held at the SimpleUsability offices in the Round Foundry Media Centre, a short walk from Leeds train station.  In the past the event has been a great way for user experience practitioners to meet up, network and learn from each other.  The evening normally includes a few short presentations, followed by an open session where ideas are bounced around and then future planning for next events. 

For this edition there is still one speaker to be confirmed, but we can promise that Fiona Harwood (Senior User Experience Consultant at SimpleUsability) will be talking about ‘How we ask why?’ a key question when moderating usability testing.  Once we have any more speakers confirmed we will let you know.  If this is something that you are interested in then please go to LinkedIn and register. 

The event has reached many in the Manchester area and been a huge success, but yet to reach its full potential in Yorkshire.  SimpleUsability hopes to help sponsor future events so that user experience practitioners can meet up, share ideas, network and hopefully generating more local business partnerships.

Using usability studies to maximise on reported UK internet business growth

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

It’s not all about the bricks and mortar.

On the morning of the 28th October, the BBC reported that the UK’s internet economy is now larger than the transport, construction or the utilities industries, according to research commissioned by Google. Internet contribution to the economy is set to grow by 10% annually.

This is positive news for online businesses coupled by other evidence showing that online sales have not slowed down in the recession.

“Some 60% of the £100bn a year figure is made up from internet consumption – the amount that users spend on online shopping and on the cost of their connections and devices to access the web.”

Source: BBC article 28 Oct 2010

Industries being transformed by the internet and small businesses that actively use the internet experience sales growth of four times more than those that don’t. (more…)

Latest addition underpins our consumer neuroscience research services.

Monday, October 4th, 2010

Latest addition to the SimpleUsability team underlines our commitment to evolving our cutting edge market research services that build on our world class eye tracking methodologies.

Lowri Davies joins us from market research agency, McCallum Layton, to pursue her passion for encouraging the use of neuropsychological and biometric measures in market research. She has worked on both qualitative and quantitative projects for clients such as O2, The Co-operative Group, HBOS, Direct Line, Smith & Nephew, Aviva and Business Link.

Guy Redwood, founder of SimpleUsability, commented “Lowri’s background in consumer neuroscience has drawn her to join the more innovative edge of the research industry. It was obvious within minutes of talking to Lowri that her passion for great research made her the perfect candidate for evolving our expanding eye tracking services.”

“The market acceptance of eye tracking as an essential tool for understanding consumer behaviour is rapidly growing. When we’re are recognised as market innovators, it is up to us to find the best talent and place that in an environment focused on remarkable excellence.”

SimpleUsability First to Use Ground-Breaking Eye-Tracking Glasses Technology

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

SimpleUsability is the first in the world to use revolutionary eye tracking glasses from Tobii.  Today, the 22nd June, the new Tobii glasses were released, but here at SimpleUsability, with support from Tobii through AcuityETS, we were able to use them for commercial research before their launch.

This revolutionary new product is able to support eye tracking, being the first of its kind as it is lightweight, mobile and allows us to monitor truly natural behaviour.  The glasses look like an ordinary, if not slightly larger, pair of glasses allowing participants to carry out daily tasks.  For our latest project we visited a number of supermarkets across the UK, watching how people perform their weekly shop.  Each user would be given the set of glasses and left to do their food shopping.  After they had finished we would play back sections of their shop, showing their eye tracking, enabling them to recall their behaviour and feelings. (more…)

SimpleUsability founder invited to speak EyeTrackUX Conference

Monday, May 31st, 2010

We’ve attended all of the EyeTrackUX conferences to date and this year we’ve been invited to speak about how we use eye tracking within our research business.

In his session, Guy will share how we run our research sessions using a retrospective protocol and it’s embedded in most aspects of our UX research at SimpleUsability. He hopes to inspire more practitioners to use more retrospective protocols in their research and dispel a few myths about what retrospective techniques achieve. He will also take this opportunity to share his thoughts on why we need to promote retrospective eye tracking research over traditional research techniques.

The conference is runs over two days in Leuven, Belgium. More details can be found on the EyeTrackUX website  http://www.eyetrackux.com

Launch of New Research Recruitment Service for Yorkshire

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

Paid Market Research in LeedsResearch Helperwww.research-helper.co.uk is a new portal for volunteers to register for taking part in market research in Leeds. Aimed at the residents of Yorkshire, it allows people to sign up with SimpleUsability once to remain on our books.

We currently have a research panel of over a thousand volunteers and we’re keen to grow that to ensure we can match the right users to our growing research needs. SimpleUsability is thought to be unique in it’s policy of only using people once for in-depth sessions. Many of our competitors re-use participants within a varrying timeframe. We prefer to use people only once and then incentivise attendees to help us find new people for our research.

Resarch Helper will be headed up by the latest addition to the team, Rozanne.

For further information email info@research-helper.co.uk