Eye Tracking is the most objective Usability tool. This concept encompasses a set of techniques and technologies that help monitor eye movement and create records of the way a person or user looks at a screen, image or scene.
What is it and what is Eye Tracking for?
Using Eye Tracking techniques together with others such as , , or others, will allow us to obtain unique and objective data from the users participating in the test.
Eye tracking is a very valuable technique for measuring when and how long users look at certain parts of an interface. It allows knowing which elements attract the attention of users and which are ignored.
Eye Tracking allows us to discover:
- The elements and components of the site that attract attention.
- The elements and components of the site that are ignored.
- The elements and components that distract the user from the important parts.
- The content they actually read and which they just scan.
- The time and frequency that users look at certain elements and components.
- At what moment users perceive the elements and components in an interface.
- If users find within the structure the information they are looking for.
Positive and negative aspects of Eye Tracking
Some positives:
- It allows the collection of objective data on how users perceive the interface and its stimuli.
- It provides better data than a first-click heatmap. An Eye Tracking test will give us in the results the amount of time that the participating users spend looking at the interface and at what points they feel attracted to it.
Some negatives:
- Eye tracking tests are usually 35-45 minutes long. Some users may become tired or fatigued while performing the test.
- Sometimes it is difficult to find participants since the fact that we register the movement of their eyes can intimidate them and they can even mistrust them.
- Physical eye tracking devices and software tools are very sensitive to environmental factors. It is necessary to control and have adequate lighting conditions for this type of test. In general, it is recommended that they be carried out in a laboratory.
How the results of an Eye Tracking are obtained
The results obtained from an Eye Tracking test are the location of the gaze on the screen, the path that the eyes travel from one point to another (saccade route), the coordinates of the eyes on the screen and the size of the eye pupil.
heat maps
Heatmaps show how long and how often certain items were examined. Warm colors like red and yellow indicate areas that were observed for a longer time.
opacity map
An opacity map is like a negative image of a heat map. Areas that participating users did not notice are dark. Only the light parts are the areas that you noticed or paid attention to.
Gaze diagrams
It represents the path of exploration and it is possible to visualize in them the pattern of a user’s gaze through a series of points. The sequence of observation points is indicated by numbers at the points. The size of the point represents the time of attention paid to that particular point.
Facebook Comments
Disqus