Better User Experience Podcast #9: An Interview with Feng-GUI CEO Rafael Mizrahi

by Ben Snyder

"A Better User Experience" (abetteruserexperience.com) website is a brilliant website with learning resources about: web usability, user testing, and building a better online user experience.

Here is an interview they had with Feng-GUI CEO, Rafael Mizrahi.

Listen to the interview at:
http://abetteruserexperience.com/2011/10/10/better-user-experience-podcast-9-an-interview-with-feng-gui-ceo-rafael-mizrahi/

DLD 2012 Conference

For the 8th time, Burda’s digital summit gathers international agenda setters in Germany and discusses topics of the digital world. This time DLD12 will take place on January 22nd until 24th, 2012 at the HVB Forum in Munich

CEO Rafael Mizrahi will attend the DLD Conference from January 22-24 in Munich.

Feng-GUI partners SimilarSites.com

SimilarSites.com Launches New Competitive Intelligence Features!

Tel Aviv, December 19, 2011 - After launching at the beginning of 2009, SimilarSites.com has been the leading place to find competitive and similar sites for any website around the web. Reaching millions of unique users per month, the company recently rolled out a major make over and added new features to deliver even better results. Visitors to the website can now use these tools for a variety of competitive intelligence analysis. Here is an overview of the new offerings:

Eye Tracking Heatmap

SimilarSites.com partnered with Feng-GUI, a visual analysis company, to incorporate their eye tracking simulation into the SimilarSites results. The new “Heatmap” tab shows a screen shot of a website’s homepage along with the corresponding color-coordinated image which predicts how a human eye views the website upon first arrival. Heatmaps for four similar websites are also shown which makes for easy competitive comparisons.

Knowing that on average, website owners only have 5 seconds to capture users attention, this technology enables webmasters to optimize the placement of content to maximize the chances of capturing users attention.




Enhanced Results

SimilarSites.com has made changes to its algorithm that deliver more targeted similar website recommendations. Websites are now characterized by specific tags, leading to a convenient browsing experience, ideal for competitive research. The “Also Visited” results, which SimilarSites.com is one of the few websites around the web that provides this service, delivers a list of 10 websites that a person who visits a website is also likely to visit. The results are calculated and show their corresponding Affinity Score, a measurement of the likelihood that someone is going to visit another specific website. Lastly, the Top Sites results have also been improved which show a birds eye view of up to 25 similar websites based on a related topic or category.




Keyword Density

Keyword Density measures how many times a specific word is used on a webpage in comparison to the total amount of text on that specific page. It can be used to gauge the quantity of specific content used in a website, which can play a major role in page rank and search positioning.

The revamped SimilarSites.com results calculate and show the keyword density for a website’s top 15 terms. With the click of a button, a user can find similar websites that also share Keyword Density for a specific word. The comparative feature can be used to understand which websites share similar keywords.



Overall, these improvements have made Similarsites a more resourceful tool for anyone doing competitive Internet research. Visit SimilarSites.com to see the new changes and start discovering similar websites today.

Update Your Reality at DLD11 conference

This is our second time heading to DLD 2011 conference at Munich and we couldn’t be more excited. If you're planning on attending DLD11 or you just happen to be in Munich and would like to meet up with us, please make sure you drop us a line at to let us know.
The DLD (Digital Life Design) Conference will be taking place for the seventh time in Munich from 23 to 25 January. With 40 panels and keynotes, speakers will discuss the effects of digitization on society, culture, the economy, and life. Invited are about 800 creatives and masterminds from media, society, technology and arts. On Sunday afternoon Maria Furtwängler will honour a creative and successful businesswoman and award her with the annual Aenne Burda Award for Creative Leadership.
Extract from the speakers' list

DIGITAL:
Numerous leading companies and successful start-ups will attend DLD 2011. Amongst them are Andrew Mason (Groupon), Nathalie Massenet (Net-a-Porter), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Dennis Crowley (Foursquare), Facebook Co-Founders Sean Parker und Chris Hughes, Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Publisher Arthur Sulzberger (New York Times) und James Murdoch (News Corporation), Nikesh Arora (Google), Randi Zuckerberg und Dan Rose (Facebook), Padmasree Warrior, (Cisco), Jim Breyer (Accel), Werner Vogels (Amazon), Designer Claude Zellweger (HTC), Jason Calacanis (Mahalo), Lars Hinrichs, Michael Arrington (TechCrunch), Esther Dyson (Edventures), Beth Comstock (CMO GE), Stefan Glänzer (Angel Investor), Barry Silbert (Second Market), Susanne Klöß (Accenture) und Pete Cashmore (Mashable).
LIFE:
The list ranges from scientists, authors and human rights activists to music-managers. Among those are: Kevin Kelly (author of “What Technology Wants”), Professor of computer science David Gelernter, Eric Anderson (Space Adventures), Troy Carter (Manager Lady Gaga), as well as human rights activist Somaly Mam, Hubert Burda (Iconic Turn), Maria Furtwaengler (Actress), Juan Enriquez (Life Science Project), Deepak Chopra (Spiritual Leader) und David Agus (Navigenics).

DESIGN:
In 2011 artist, designer and architects will once again round up DLD. Including artist Olafur Eliasson, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (Serpentine Gallery), Bill Gross (Idealab), Bjarke Ingels (BIG) and Tino Sehgal (artist).

The event will be chaired by the Israeli investor Yossi Vardi and the publisher Hubert Burda and is taking place at the HypoVereinsbank Forum in Munich. The founders of the conference are Steffi Czerny and Dr. Marcel Reichart who established DLD in 2005.

DLD cooperates with numerous innovative companies like Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, HP, Ernst & Young, Sky, Telefonica O2, Lufthansa, Strategy&brand and Deutsche Telekom.

Feng-GUI Dashboard v3 released

Feng-GUI has added Gaze Plot, Opacity and Areas of Interest (AOIs) reports to its Attention Analysis service which measures the performance of design in websites and advertisement.
The Gaze Plot, Opacity and AOIs reports are familiar for those of you who are using eye-tracking.
Having these reports within Feng-GUI Dashboard enhances the analysis possibilities and gives the designer more details about how the viewers perceive what they see.

Feng-GUI Dashboard version 3

Feng-GUI simulates human vision during the first 5 seconds of exposure to visuals. It creates heatmaps based on an algorithm that predicts what a real human would be most likely to look at. This offers designers, advertisers and creatives, a Pre-testing technology that predicts performance of an image, by analyzing levels of attention, brand effectiveness and placement, as well as breaking down the flow of attention.

Feng-GUI Attention Heatmap report

The Gaze Plot report visualizes the scan paths and order between elements inside the image. A Gaze Plot report is also referred as scanpath report.
It is made of a series of short stops (called fixations) and fast movements of an eye (called saccades).

Fixations are marked with circles along with a number that state the order in which the eyes move between fixations.
The first fixation is marked with the number 1. The time between fixations is about 300 milliseconds (ms).

Use the Gaze Plot report to visually demonstrate fixations order and gaze paths.

Feng-GUI Gaze Plot report

The Opacity map report tones down information that is not attractive and visually displays what your viewers may perceive during the first few seconds of visual inspection.
The most transparent areas are those that attract more attention.
Use the Opacity report to identify which areas are being perceived and which are being ignored.

Feng-GUI Opacity Map report

The Areas of Interest report (AOIs) lets you define areas inside the image and determine the percentage of the attention this area is drawing.
Areas of Interest report is also referred as Regions of Interest report (ROIs)

Feng-GUI Areas of Interest AOIs report

Use the Areas of Interest tool to compare results between different versions of your design and layout.

Areas of Interest AOIs tool

The price of usability testing and eye tracking is high and many advertisers, agencies and media companies are not willing to spend that amount of money, per ad or per web page. Designers need to perform a guesswork decisions during the creative process.

Using Feng-GUI attention analysis, designers realize which areas of the webpage, photo or advertisement gets most of the attention.
The reports helps to optimize the layout of a webpage, along with its buttons and banners and identify weak spots within an ad and improve its performance.