Sentient

Understanding consumer behavior requires more than collecting conventional survey responses. Sentient needed digital research experiences capable of capturing subconscious emotional reactions, navigation behavior, response speed, accuracy, attention patterns, and interactions with visual stimuli. These experiences also needed to operate reliably across devices while processing video, behavioral events, and large volumes of research data without disrupting participant engagement.

Digital Avenues developed a portfolio of interactive research applications that captured behavioral and emotional signals through different forms of digital interaction. The solutions combined real-time facial expression analysis, interactive shelf-image testing, gamified surveys, and attention-based gameplay to capture measurable behavioral signals such as facial expressions, click paths, response speed, accuracy, navigation patterns, and gameplay performance.

• Real-Time Facial Expression & Emotion Analysis
• Interactive Product Findability Testing
• Gamified Behavioral Surveys
• Attention & Distraction Measurement
• Real-Time Video Streaming & Webcam Capture
• Asynchronous Behavioral Data Collection

The platform combines browser-based AI and computer vision with real-time video processing and scalable cloud infrastructure. WebRTC enables webcam capture, while TensorFlow.js and Face-api.js support facial expression analysis. HLS adaptive streaming provides efficient video delivery, and Web Workers enable video chunks to be uploaded asynchronously without blocking the main application. Interactive research experiences capture detailed event-level behavior, including timestamps, click positions, navigation paths, response accuracy, and gameplay performance, with research data stored for subsequent analysis.

Digital Avenues delivered frontend and backend engineering across Sentient's behavioral research experiences, including facial expression analysis, video streaming, product findability testing, gamified surveys, and interactive attention games. Our contribution covered AI and computer vision integration, interactive UI development, video processing, behavioral event tracking, asynchronous data capture, cloud storage, APIs, database integration, and cross-device experience optimization.

The solutions enabled Sentient to move beyond traditional survey responses and capture richer behavioral signals from research participants. Facial analysis provided insights into emotional responses, findability testing measured how efficiently consumers navigated product designs, gamified surveys captured speed and accuracy, and attention-based gameplay provided behavioral indicators through interactive tasks. Together, these capabilities strengthened Sentient's ability to quantify implicit consumer behavior and generate deeper insights for product and advertising research.