Gidley's Gossipings

Recently I was at a Trade Show (Money 2020 in Las Vegas) and was wondering how effective the booth designs were at getting people’s attention. There seem to be a number of apporaches people try

• Big Pictures to grab attention
• Videos on loop explaining stuff
• ‘Gimmicks’ on the stand
• Live Talks
• Text explaining products
• Slogans explaining mission

What’s not clear to me is which of these actually work. Annecdotially you can watch people go buy and see what they look at, and then observe who engages. But it struck me that it should be possible to do this more scientifically.

Eye tracking has been around for many years in website testing and a few companies can do it now with simply a web cam (no headsets on the people being tracked). So why not mount 1 or two webcams on the booth and try and video people passing by to gather some real data on what is catching people’s attention.

I had a quick google, and it doesn’t look like such a product exists today, there are some libaries that may help you build such a solution (you’d need to combine face tracking and eye tracking tools). I suspect event organizers and shops would love such technology.