68 FUTURE SHOCK Audience Analysis
Words by Neal Romanek A German start-up is measuring everything from skin temperature to eye tracking to understand what makes viewers tick – and what keeps them coming back for more VIEWING THE VIEWER
ark Drexler and business partner Sebastian Erhardt founded Berlin-based Tållbeard Studios in 2016 as a product design
company with a wide, multi-disciplinary strategy, embracing both art and science. Through its Cognitive Laboratories arm, the business mixes cutting-edge technology with social science to give customers real- time analysis of every aspect of a product user’s experience. Prior to Tållbeard, Drexler had a career working with high-profile brands, such as Adidas and Sony, and consulting for agile start-ups from product vision to rollout. Most recently, he helped build the design team at the Telekom Innovation Labs (T-Labs), the R&D unit of Deutsche Telekom, working in partnership with the Technische Universität Berlin. The Tållbeard team includes product designers, social and cognitive scientists, usability experts and developers. “Tållbeard offers operational, technical and strategic support in product development, usability, testing, user experience and service design, with a focus on multi-channel and multi-device, user-centric design,” explains Drexler. “We involve users or fans very early in a client’s product development process through biometric usability tests, for example. Already testing a product or feature before the real market entry saves a lot of time and money.” Tållbeard Cognitive Laboratories
specialises in deep analysis, examining exactly what makes viewers tick and why. “We can, for example, investigate the consumer behaviour of sports fans on all the end devices they’re using, whether that’s TV, smartphone or VR glasses,” says Drexler. “We use a lot of different methods to achieve this, from interviews to biometrics, and we can test for a range of viewing venues, like in a car, or train or plane.”
and accurate information about how their products are working. In the tremendous economies of scale that digital content allows, a difference of five seconds of viewing time, multiplied over millions, can add up to a substantial sum in revenue. Biometric analysis – measurement of human body responses – give insight into what exactly is happening when the viewer encounters a piece of content. So far the work has been in Germany, Switzerland and Austria primarily, but they are now looking farther afield and looking toward opening a studio in the UK. One
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