Eye Tracking Methodology

Luke Li

From digitaltrends.com

Agenda

What is eye tracking?

Terminology
Hypothesis

Design

When to use eye tracking

Sample task objectives

Prepare
Conduct
Analyze and report

Example: Google vs. Bing

Statistical metrics
Example: Gazing at faces

What is eye tracking?

Eye tracking is simply following the trail of where a person is looking.
---- Nielson & Pernice

From Goldberg & Tang, 2011

What is eye tracking?

Terminology
We see the world through our eyes. Our eye do not move in one smooth and
panning way. Instead, they move in spurts and rests between each movement.
When the eye is
resting on
something, its
called a fixation
The rapid
movements from
one fixation to the
next are called
saccades

Eye tracker tracks the time, duration and location of our eyes fixations and the
saccades between fixations. During saccades, we are blind. We see only during
fixations, while the eye is holding still.
From Goldberg & Tang, 2011

What is eye tracking?

Hypothesis
Throughout the years, one of the strongest validations for the power of eye
tracking is the Mind-Eye Hypothesis (Just & Carpenter, 1980):
What people are looking at

What people are thinking about

Is that always the case in real life?

Not necessarily people might be
looking at the traffic light while thinking
about their upcoming dinner.

However, it holds true in experimental

scenarios when participants are looking at
visual stimulus: people usually pay
attention to and think about what they are
looking at.
From Goldberg & Tang, 2011

Design
When to use eye tracking?
When you are in later stages of product development
Working prototype
When your testing purpose is to diagnose usability issues
When you are comparing different designs or trying to
reach a consensus
When you want to learn beyond users self-report
When you care about the process more than the task
results

Design
When to use eye tracking?
When you have participants and resources at your disposal
5-10 participants for qualitative studies, and 20-30
participants for quantitative studies
Eye Tracking only allows single sessions

When the eye tracker equipment and staff are available to

help
On-site or conference sessions; not recommended for
remote sessions

Design
When to use eye tracking?
When you can allocate sufficient time to the project and
coordinate with others.
6 weeks (with some eye tracking experience) to up to
10 weeks (without any eye tracking experience)
Week
1

2-3
4

Objectives
Learn about relevant eye tracking knowledge and previous eye tracking studies
Design research questions, tasks and possible analysis metrics in the study. Set up meetings
with eye tracking experts on the team or other researchers to get advice and guidance.
Prepare the testing stimulus of your study. Create tests and tasks in eye tracking software.

5-6

Pilot test your study and iterate your study design. Recruit participants.

7-8

Conduct your study with on-site participants

9-10

Analyze all the eye tracking data you collected, and generate result deliverables

Design
Sample task objectives
Research Question Guide
E.g., you are interested in how users use this UI component:
How long does it take for users to see this UI component?
How long does it take for users to go from seeing the UI component
to actually clicking it? (Uncertainty Time)
E.g., you are interested in what areas on the UI attract users attention?
What areas do users spend most of their time looking at?
Do different users have similar browsing / scanning strategies?
Do different strategies associate with user backgrounds?

Prepare
Set up testing environment in eye
tracker (Tobii eye tracker example)
Design eye tracking tasks and set
up analysis metrics accordingly
Plan specific testing procedures
(intro, calibration, test,
questionnaires)

Conduct
Conference or laboratory setting
Typically the first 2-3 slides are general
introduction of the experiment
A pilot test is needed in order to minimize the
learning effect
Each task should be preceded by an instruction
screen, often followed by a briefly presented
fixation screen
Minimize talking as it may result in head
movement (in conflict with think aloud
protocols)

Analyze and report

Familiarize yourself with eye tracking analysis concepts
Fixations & Saccades
Area of Interest (AOI) Analysis
Visits

Replay and Segment your data

Replay to view dynamic gaze recording

Use "Visualization" to get a general qualitative sense of the

eye tracking data
View the Gaze Plot and Heat Map

Use statistical analysis metrics to analyze your eye tracking

data

Analyze and report

Analysis (Tobii eye tracker
example)
Replay Scan-path
On the bottom of the page, there
is a blue timeline. Drag the righthand slider of the timeline back
and forth to reveal the scan-path
strategy.

Replay Heat Map

Click the Heat Map icon. Make
sure multiple participants are
selected.

Analyze and report

Example: Google vs. Bing (2009)

Source: User Centric, 2009

Analyze and report

Example: Google vs. Bing (2011)

Source: User Centric, 2011

Analyze and report

Statistical metrics
How long does it take for users to see the AOI(s)?
Time to first fixation

On average, how long are users' fixation on the AOI(s)?

Fixation duration

How many times do users fixate on the AOI(s) in total?

Fixation count

On average, how many fixations do users have before seeing

the AOI(s)?
Fixation before

How long is the uncertainty time?

Time from First Fixation to Next Mouse Click

Analyze and report

Example: Gazing at faces

From Li & Tottenham, 2011

Thank you for your attention!