An Eye-Tracking Investigation of Consumer’s Real-Time Behaviors in Professional Minor League Hockey

Minor league hockey provides a unique setting to investigate consumers’ marketingcontrolled activities in a natural environment. Consumers’ visual attention to sponsorship information has been shown to influence their explicit memory of sponsor brands and their purchase intentions. The current research builds on the sponsorship information processing framework of previous scholars by examining consumers’ real-time behaviors to sponsorship information in a natural setting. To analyze consumers’ behaviors at minor league hockey sporting events, qualitative and quantitative data were collected from 16 participants. The qualitative data related to the patterns and observations of consumers’ visual attention behaviors. The quantitative data measured consumers’ fixation duration, fixation frequency, explicit memory (i.e., recall and recognition), and sponsorship response. Through the utilization of a Structural Equation Model (SEM) analysis, the current study constructed a comprehensive understanding of consumers’ information search processes to sponsorship signage. Results indicated that consumers’ fixation frequency influences their ability to recall and recognize sponsorship information, resulting in a positive sponsorship response. The results of this study provide tangible evidence to sport and corporate marketers, indicating expected consumption outcomes based on consumers’ visual attention in a natural environment. The current study highlights sponsorship strategies for marketers to increase sponsors’ return on investment

Sculpting a mobile musical soundtrack

We present an in-the-wild project to design and study a mobile musical soundtrack that enhances the experience of visiting a sculpture park. As with soundtracks for films and games, the goal was to enhance the emotional and narrative aspects of the experience while remaining in the background. We describe a compositional approach in which we first established a broad musical landscape before treating specific exhibits with detailed musical trajectories. Our study reveals how our soundtrack dramatically shaped visitors’ experiences while they remained largely unaware of its operation. We distil seven experiential factors to be addressed by mobile soundtracks alongside ten compositional guidelines

Electronic Dance Music in Narrative Film

As a growing number of filmmakers are moving away from the traditional model of orchestral underscoring in favor of a more contemporary approach to film sound, electronic dance music (EDM) is playing an increasingly important role in current soundtrack practice. With a focus on two specific examples, Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (1998) and Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (1998), this essay discusses the possibilities that such a distinctive aesthetics brings to filmmaking, especially with regard to audiovisual rhythm and sonic integration

Brand placement in music videos: the effect of brand prominence and artist connectedness on brand recall and brand attitude

This study uses a 2 by 2 between subjects factorial design to investigate the impact of brand prominence and artist connectedness on brand placement effectiveness in music videos. The results show that brand prominence has a positive effect on brand recall, regardless of the respondents’ connectedness to the artist. Furthermore, when respondents do not identify themselves with the artist, brand prominence does not influence brand attitude, but when respondents identify themselves with the artist in the music video, the attitude toward the music video is higher for prominent than for subtle brands

Speaker emotion can affect ambiguity production

Does speaker emotion affect degree of ambiguity in referring expressions? We used referential communication tasks preceded by mood induction to examine whether positive emotional valence may be linked to ambiguity of referring expressions. In Experiment 1, participants had to identify sequences of objects with homophonic labels (e.g., the animal bat, a baseball bat) for hypothetical addressees. This required modification of the homophones. Happy speakers were less likely to modify the second homophone to repair a temporary ambiguity (i.e., they were less likely to say … first cover the bat, then cover the baseball bat …). In Experiment 2, participants had to identify one of two identical objects in an object array, which required a modifying relative clause (the shark that's underneath the shoe). Happy speakers omitted the modifying relative clause twice as often as neutral speakers (e.g., by saying Put the shark underneath the sheep), thereby rendering the entire utterance ambiguous in the context of two sharks. The findings suggest that one consequence of positive mood appears to be more ambiguity in speech. This effect is hypothesised to be due to a less effortful processing style favouring an egocentric bias impacting perspective taking or monitoring of alignment of utterances with an addressee's perspective

Motor action and emotional memory

Can simple motor actions affect how efficiently people retrieve emotional memories, and influence what they choose to remember? In Experiment 1, participants were prompted to retell autobiographical memories with either positive or negative valence, while moving marbles either upward or downward. They retrieved memories faster when the direction of movement was congruent with the valence of the memory (upward for positive, downward for negative memories). Given neutral-valence prompts in Experiment 2, participants retrieved more positive memories when instructed to move marbles up, and more negative memories when instructed to move them down, demonstrating a causal link from motion to emotion. Results suggest that positive and negative life experiences are implicitly associated with schematic representations of upward and downward motion, consistent with theories of metaphorical mental representation. Beyond influencing the efficiency of memory retrieval, the direction of irrelevant, repetitive motor actions can also partly determine the emotional content of the memories people retrieve: moving marbles upward (an ostensibly meaningless action) can cause people to think more positive thoughts

Enabling Audiovisual User Interfaces

“Enabling Audiovisual User Interfaces” was a 2-year project, supported by a Marie Curie EU fellowship, conducted at EAVI, Goldsmiths. During the project, I investigated how human-computer interactions can be audiovisualized in order to improve user experience and usability. To address this issue, a new UI paradigm was proposed – AVUI (AudioVisual User Interface). AVUI links interaction, sound and image, building upon the concept of Graphical User Interface (GUI) by adding interconnected sound and image. The research hypothesis was: the introduction of AVUI, integrating interrelated sonic and visual feedback, reacting to user interactions, would lead to more usable, accessible, playful and engaging UIs, as compared to a traditional GUI – particularly in use cases where accessibility and/or engagement were determinant. I applied AVUIs to case studies, which was the object of user testing. After reaching conclusions from these, I proposed an AVUI framework, including software modules and a set of best practices. Dissemination activities were also implemented