Eye tracking

The most effective way of telling if an interactive design is working is using eye tracking. With this state of the art technology you can see what the users see and get a clear answers on what works and what’s not.

An eye tracking test is very much like a normal usage test except from that the user is using the eye tracker instead of a normal computer when the test is conducted. The eye tracker it self looks very much like an external flat screen monitor. In the eye tracker there an infrared beam is is used to create a reflection in the respondents eyes. This reflection is picked up by an infra red sensitive camera that registers the slightest eye movements the respondents does down to 1:1000′s of a second and witin a 5mm radius on the screen. By letting this information guide any design decision you have in your possession the most powerful design tool imaginable.

Analyzing the eye tracking data

An eye tracking study generates a vast amount of data that needs to be analyzed carefully in order to to give rise to the findings. The eye tracking software makes it possible to export the test session in full length video showing the eye movements on the screen as a colored lines and dots. This video is then analyzed second by second in order to pick op on any problem the user encounters in the interaction. The software can also create stunning visualizations of every page the users visits during the test.

Visualizing the eye movements

When all users eye movements are gathered and put together very interesting visualizations can be created. The most common visualization is the heat map. This picture showing the users attention like the temperature on a whether map. It displays attractive areas as red color , the slightly less interesting as yellow or green, while the areas not noted by the user is left without coloring. The interesting observation is how similar the users eye movements tend to be are on a page. It is not common that users from totally different target groups basically focus on the same parts of a design. It is the intensity and the time spent on a page that differs the most.

Another interesting visualization is the gaze plot. this picture shows follows a users eye movements as the user views a page. The Gaze plot can show in which order the user takes in a page and judging olny by the pattern showed in the picture it is possible to determine if the user are making sense of the page or if he or she is confused or even got stuck somewhere in the interaction.

The best design tool in the world

I can’t stress enogh how important it is to get to know what the your users perceive. Every time I help a client to conduct usage test the same thing happens. The client always get truly amazed by findings and the clarity and precision of the results. No matter what kind of interactive site or service you have, chances are that the users eye movements could give you invaluable information about how to improve it.

In my opinion is eye tracking the most effective design tool i have. All design work, however creative, is always based on different kinds of ideas or hypothesis. It is only when we can gather live eye tracking data from real users from the real target group that uses the service or viewing the pages can we can know for sure.