Usually, eyetracking technology (tracking where people are looking at) is only found within usability labs. The technology requires expensive hardware and has to be calibrated before each use. Usually the tracking only works over short distances (from user to screen).

A little different are things with the eyebox2 by xuuk. This little device claims to track people’s gazes over a distance of up to 10 meters in every day situations.

It is targeted at advertisers who can track how many people are looking at their billboard ads. Some are already dreaming about new business models which charge money per view – you only pay for ads that are really being looked at. For the time being this is still advertiser’s utopia, though.

I can imagine some potential uses besides advertisement. Interactive installations could react on the user’s line of sight. It is probably a weird feeling if you direct your sight at a wall and everywhere where you look there is something happening, but nowhere else. :)

Unfortunately, the eyebox2 is still to expensive for such experiments. According to Newsweek it currently costs about 1500 Dollars. The developers hope to push the price down to 100 Dollars in the middle term.

» xuuk eyebox2

(via Kreativrauschen.de via Feng-GUI)

Interactive Shop Window Advertising

The Digitalist created an interesting ad for Elle Macpherson Intimates (apparently an underwear brand). They placed a huuuge display in a shop window which shows only the brand name on black background by default. As soon as someone moves in front of the window, this visitor’s silhouette opens a view behind the black – onto videos of sparely dressed women. It is like an inverted shadow with smear effect. :)

You can see it in this video:

» read on!