Click survey 2, Electric Bugaloo

July 24, 2006 11:39 AM

You might have caught the first Click Survey on mefi projects, but there's a new and much more interesting series of 8 images in Click Survey 2. Click where you feel like and watch the results in real time.
posted by mathowie (39 comments total)

I was hoping someone would make a post about this. Great project.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 11:44 AM on July 24, 2006

The original looks much better now there are more clicks on it. I think this will improve over time much more. Some strange and interesting patterns here... not quite sure what any of it means, if it means anything...
posted by Acey at 11:50 AM on July 24, 2006

This is really neat, and I'd love to know more about it. Is there some kind of behavioral thesis behind the whole thing, or is it all just for fun and idle curiosity? Also, I humbly request more pictures to click on, both abstract and representational.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:51 AM on July 24, 2006

The problem with the 8 new ones is that clicks are also based on the last picture the person saw. Someone may want to always click in the same place, or in a diffrent place each time.
posted by delmoi at 11:52 AM on July 24, 2006

Flagged as self-link.
posted by Plutor at 11:53 AM on July 24, 2006

I got 'em all wrong.
posted by Floydd at 12:00 PM on July 24, 2006

I liked click survey 1 as it seemed to suggest a possible way to track eye movement in art, or at least to figure out the significance of certain elements in a painting. What I mean is the way the clicks are mapped onto the image suggest to my mind a map of how most people's eyes traced the image. Which I find fascinating.
posted by jrb223 at 12:08 PM on July 24, 2006 [1 favorite]

I really liked the first one. It felt less random.
posted by nadawi at 12:16 PM on July 24, 2006

I didn't even see 'don't click here' as it would have required scrolling my browser.

I wasn't deliberately clicking anywhere in particular, except on the happy face picture, where I thought it'd be cute and odd to click where the nose would be. A huge number of other people also did so, and then I was disappointed in myself for being neither creative nor odd.

I'm still examining why I felt that way, and how I feel about how I felt that way.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:17 PM on July 24, 2006

Thanks professor. And make mine Camembert if you would be so kind.
posted by hal9k at 12:25 PM on July 24, 2006

I was repeatedly drawn to the same dud pixel on my monitor, except in the few cases where it was obscured by a black part of one of the images: then I was confused, until I noticed some flecks of dust and a cat-hair, & clicked on those.
posted by misteraitch at 12:29 PM on July 24, 2006

Metafilter: neither creative nor odd

sorry
posted by edgeways at 12:32 PM on July 24, 2006

Is there some kind of behavioral thesis behind the whole thing, or is it all just for fun and idle curiosity?

My theses:

Image 1 illustrates our desire for order in chaos.

Image 2 illustrates our yin and our yang, and our lesser known yong.

Image 3 illustrates our hind-brain desire to accurately target running deer.

Image 4 illustrates the ratio of conformists (top right) to non-conformists (everywhere else) to anarchists (bottom left).

Image 5 illustrates our collective artistic yearning to hold the mirror up to nature more clearly.

Image 6 illustrates our darker desire to shoot that deer again, even though it's dead.

Image 7 illustrates how anarchists eventually break down into useless competing factions.

Image 8 illustrates our desire to copy that which we like, but with our own attempt at creativity.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 12:35 PM on July 24, 2006

(awesome post title)
posted by contessa at 12:36 PM on July 24, 2006

Neat. I wonder if the order the images are presented in changes where people tend to click. (My guess: it would make some difference).
posted by raedyn at 12:39 PM on July 24, 2006

They're both broken as far as I can see. Anyone else?
posted by agropyron at 12:55 PM on July 24, 2006

Yes, broken. Is there a metafilter equivalent to slashdotted? Metafiltered?
posted by mrnutty at 12:56 PM on July 24, 2006

Yep, linky broky.

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posted by yhbc at 12:58 PM on July 24, 2006

Damnit, I was just going through that blog and you fuckers had to go and break it.
posted by bob sarabia at 1:04 PM on July 24, 2006

I kilt it! I kilt it with my clicking! What do I win?
posted by fenriq at 1:04 PM on July 24, 2006

It's Meffed, I think.
posted by armoured-ant at 1:05 PM on July 24, 2006

A thinly veiled test of the reactions of the last 7 frustrated mefites who could not access the pictures? Deep.
posted by Cranberry at 1:11 PM on July 24, 2006

hmm methinks it be mefried and digg effect-ive disordered
posted by isopraxis at 1:53 PM on July 24, 2006

Yeah.

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I thought it was some sneaky Rorsach test and you guys were seeing all kinds of things I wasn't.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 1:56 PM on July 24, 2006

Jeesh. I previewed but didn't see the commish's ages-old comment. Sorry.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 1:59 PM on July 24, 2006

Working again. Man, people are sheep.
posted by languagehat at 2:55 PM on July 24, 2006

I optimized the script... sorry for the error messages. I gotta say I'm most fascinated by the second image right now... it's as if it split the X from the first image in half.
posted by philipp at 2:59 PM on July 24, 2006

I was totally not expecting the x pattern. People really seem to like to subdivide space at corners (witness the last one). I also like how both the circle and smiley inspired people to emphasize on the horizontal symmetry, and click in the middle. No one seems to like vertical symmetry.
posted by JZig at 3:06 PM on July 24, 2006

Cool post, mathowie. Thank you.

jrb223, Interesting comment. Years ago a merchandising expert stopped at my street vending stand and explained how people's eyes move around a painting and that I would do better business if I arranged my display in that pattern. It worked immediately.

There is quite a lot of work done on this, for a number of reasons. Gaze and eye tracking to help information be better placed on web pages etc. for learning, eyeputers, business, lots of reasons.

Seems like Philipp Lenssen is quite a techocrat and doing some fun/interesting things. As a Googlaholic I'm interested in his work.
posted by nickyskye at 4:00 PM on July 24, 2006

How are people "playing" these, because there seem to be two possible strategies that will result in different outcomes:

(a) Immediately, unthinkingly click at the first spot that catches your eye. This is how I've been trying to do it because it seems the fairest.
(b) Take your time to decide where to click, thinking "I bet not many people click here", or "There's no way I'm clicking on the text that says click here".
posted by Jimbob at 4:24 PM on July 24, 2006

My favorite part is the logarithmic drop-off of interest. As of right now:

f(1) = 16548
f(2) = 9578
f(3) = 7009
f(4) = 5879
f(5) = 5341
f(6) = 5003
f(7) = 4792
f(8) = 4683
posted by Plutor at 4:33 PM on July 24, 2006

Seriously, two-thirds of the idiots couldn't click to the end? Come on.
posted by Plutor at 4:35 PM on July 24, 2006

Yay! I liked the first one, and I like the second one even better.
posted by cortex at 4:53 PM on July 24, 2006

What I mean is the way the clicks are mapped onto the image suggest to my mind a map of how most people's eyes traced the image

Which explains the large number of clicks on the third woman's breasts, the pile of money and the booze!

I really quite liked the first one actually. It'd be great to see this with a really complicated painting or photo.
posted by Serial Killer Slumber Party at 4:54 PM on July 24, 2006

By arranging the composition elements in a certain way, an artist controls and forces the movement of the viewer's eyes in and around the composition with the painting.

Handy phrases for research on this topic are gaze data and eye tracking.
posted by nickyskye at 5:06 PM on July 24, 2006

I think people don't click to the end because they don't get immediate feedback. When I finally got to the last page, I could barely remember where I had clicked or what each of the images represented.

I liked the first one with the painting better. More like that would be helpful for composition. This just doesn't feel as interesting to me.
posted by willnot at 5:16 PM on July 24, 2006

I just just found myself clicking in the same place every time, because there was nothing much to look at and I was keen to progress to a more interesting image, which never came. I suspect that if the first image had some content, I'd've bothered to scroll to a particular point, and continued to do so for the subsequent images.

(Also, I second what willnot said about immediate feedback, and even when you get to the end, it's not much use knowing that 18,076 clicked in the same place I did on the first image if I don't know how many people in total have clicked on that image.)
posted by jack_mo at 6:21 PM on July 24, 2006

I'm lazy. I click wherever my mouse happened to be. Now I'm tempted to go back and intentionally click lots of stuff and make it say "hi" or something.

Image 2 illustrates our yin and our yang, and our lesser known yong.

My yong is very well known, thank you.
posted by loquacious at 7:38 PM on July 24, 2006

Thanks for the additional links and terminology, nickyskye, my first expoosure to this concept was way back in a high school studio art class, where, quite reductively, eye movement = art. The point we started from was that all art was simply repetition and variety, organized to create pleasurable eye movement. An overly simplified way of looking at art, certainly, but at the same time a pragmatically useful starting point for one looking to make art.
posted by jrb223 at 8:39 AM on July 26, 2006