The SCREENS.tv Blog

Watching the watchers (0)

 

The recent JCDecaux/Eyetracker study of exactly how consumers view screens at Heathrow Airport has been exciting plenty of comment – not least because it’s a rare example of research that gets into the nitty-gritty of how digital out-of-home works, rather than just establishing that it sometimes does, or implying that it might.

Here’s what Greg Jeffreys of Paradigm Audio Visual – a veteran of the Manchester Airport digital-signage installation and chair of InfoComm’s European Council – had to say:

At one level I find it hard to comment because it’s a specialist area. But it also parallels other work I have been involved in concerning other aspects of perception.
 
As part of my InfoComm duties I sit on the task group writing a new ANSI standard on projected image contrast ratios. In our practical work and research investigating what comprises ‘acceptable’ and ‘good’ image quality, as driven by contrast ratio, then we are becoming increasingly aware that it’s not just a question of the physics of how and what we see – it’s how this is processed by our optical systems too.

The point being that what we ‘see’ is not a direct and unmediated input from eye to brain to received perception, but that there’s extensive interpolation upon that input that processes and filters what we think we are ‘seeing’. (Google ‘contrast rendering factor’ for one definable example.) And this interpolation can be informed by any aspect or feature of our environment and experience of it.
 
Which brings us to movement. It’s completely logical that our ancestors needed to see that twitch of leaves from the corner of their eyes before the tiger attacked. So it’s a survival-driven reflex action that draws our eye to movement.

Thus I can foresee a metric whereby an advertiser could be assured of an x% increased likelihood of the viewing of moving content over static displays, for example. So the JCDecaux work is of definite value. But it remains down to the quality and viewer relevance of the content that will make the poor punter keep his or her gaze upon it.
 
The other parallel with my own nerd-work is that it’s a multi-level issue. In practice this makes it tempting to either rub in large doses of snake oil (imagine a bull with the trots, or projector and display manufacturers’ contrast claims) rather than to break the issue down into its component parts and deal with each in adequate detail.

In this case it’s content being distinguished from the mode of delivery. We can all see many examples of both content and screens that would have got the hooter on Juke Box Jury (a TV reference for the benefit of other geriatrics) which is gradually informing an evolution out of the primeval soup of what we technicians call ‘crap signage’.
 
But it’s not just a question of refining content and delivery. There’s an implicit warning in this too. Many people take the example of Minority Report as providing a shining example of where the signage industry might be leading us. But that is surely the point of overload where, for example, our eyes will be so besieged with continuous movement to the point that we no longer even register its presence. It’s a cycle of diminishing returns.
 
To apply this to a business perspective, I would say that JCDecaux’s research will mostly prove of benefit to a sector of signage concerned with high-traffic, premium-demographic locations which will be worth spending big bucks on tooling up with fancy signage. It’s a sign of a maturing market that we’ll see specialists in areas such as these – as well as these vast estates of LCD panels gradually consolidating into media packages worthy of media buyers’ notice.

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