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How do people look at Apple’s movie trailers page?

71 points by bkrausz 15y ago

daniel_levine 15y ago
It looks like people aren't ping-ponging around. It seems like the most important factor is location which seem somewhat trivial but is still really interesting in the detail we can get. The trailer site is a marketing tool and it appears there are certain slots that should be more valuable than others. While some of it is obvious, things like avoiding the left are not. My guess on why no one looks on the left side is the utilization of the right rail which moves the center zone right and it's distinctive appearance as opposed to the rest of the page probably accounts for why the right rail gets a bit more attention than the left column of posters. That's just speculation, but it would be cool to remove the right rail, recenter the trailers and see what changes!
ankneo 15y ago
I think it is a neat collection of the upcoming movies. Also the Front Row app inside OSX lists the trailors from it.. So all in call cool place to get your fav. trailers..
netmau5 15y ago
If you want someone to look at something, only give them one thing to look at.
- lbarrow 15y ago
  As the author of this blog post, I wish I had thought of that line :)
tsunamifury 15y ago
Have you concidering that this ping-ponging is actually people doing natural search patterns that they prefer. That they'd rather not be controlled and funnelled when browsing content. The equality this design gives allows you to emulate the old fashion store experience.
softbuilder 15y ago
I didn't understand the point of this post. Perhaps I've been spoiled by the fascinating little tidbits from blogs like OK Cupid's, but I found no tidbits here. Fascinate or educate me, please. :)
- dschobel 15y ago
  Failing to reject the null hypothesis as they did is still a worthwhile result
protomyth 15y ago
Apple puts up a lot of foreign language movie trailers. People who view the page a lot and don't enjoy foreign language films might skip them. This might account for some of the results.
shalmanese 15y ago
It's worth noting that when you're doing multiple significance tests, the threshold for significance goes up dramatically. Naively, if you're doing 20 tests, you should expect one to be statistically significant, even if the null hypothesis is true. That 3 were statistically significant from a sample of 25 is, itself, not statistically significant and any attempt to explain them defaults back to just-so stories. An interesting test to run would be to see whether the same outliers held when new movies are added to the page which shift the position of the existing movies.
smackfu 15y ago
One time I complained (aka ranted) to Apple about the movie trailer page, and actually got a response back.
4J7z0Fgt63dTZbs 15y ago
What devices do they use? Technically a good webcam that can detect and track head and eye would do the trick, but I've seen the head gear and other funny setups.

71 points by bkrausz 15y ago

It looks like people aren't ping-ponging around. It seems like the most important factor is location which seem somewhat trivial but is still really interesting in the detail we can get. The trailer site is a marketing tool and it appears there are certain slots that should be more valuable than others. While some of it is obvious, things like avoiding the left are not. My guess on why no one looks on the left side is the utilization of the right rail which moves the center zone right and it's distinctive appearance as opposed to the rest of the page probably accounts for why the right rail gets a bit more attention than the left column of posters. That's just speculation, but it would be cool to remove the right rail, recenter the trailers and see what changes!

ankneo 15y ago

I think it is a neat collection of the upcoming movies. Also the Front Row app inside OSX lists the trailors from it.. So all in call cool place to get your fav. trailers..

netmau5 15y ago

If you want someone to look at something, only give them one thing to look at.

lbarrow 15y ago
As the author of this blog post, I wish I had thought of that line :)

tsunamifury 15y ago

Have you concidering that this ping-ponging is actually people doing natural search patterns that they prefer. That they'd rather not be controlled and funnelled when browsing content. The equality this design gives allows you to emulate the old fashion store experience.

softbuilder 15y ago

I didn't understand the point of this post. Perhaps I've been spoiled by the fascinating little tidbits from blogs like OK Cupid's, but I found no tidbits here. Fascinate or educate me, please. :)

dschobel 15y ago
Failing to reject the null hypothesis as they did is still a worthwhile result

protomyth 15y ago

Apple puts up a lot of foreign language movie trailers. People who view the page a lot and don't enjoy foreign language films might skip them. This might account for some of the results.

shalmanese 15y ago

It's worth noting that when you're doing multiple significance tests, the threshold for significance goes up dramatically. Naively, if you're doing 20 tests, you should expect one to be statistically significant, even if the null hypothesis is true. That 3 were statistically significant from a sample of 25 is, itself, not statistically significant and any attempt to explain them defaults back to just-so stories. An interesting test to run would be to see whether the same outliers held when new movies are added to the page which shift the position of the existing movies.

smackfu 15y ago

One time I complained (aka ranted) to Apple about the movie trailer page, and actually got a response back.

4J7z0Fgt63dTZbs 15y ago

What devices do they use? Technically a good webcam that can detect and track head and eye would do the trick, but I've seen the head gear and other funny setups.