Gaze vs. Mouse in Games: The Effects on User Experience Tersia //Gowases, Roman Bednarik, Markku Tukiainen Department of Computer Science and Statistics University of Joensuu Finland
Eye-movement tracking technique Rests on eye-mind hypothesis Visual attention is linked to the location of the attended region Eye-tracker reports a stream of saccades and fixations Fixation duration is thought to be related to the depth of required processing. Fixation count or sum of fixation durations on a certain element can be related to the importance of the element. Numerous other ET measures exist Eye-tracking
Eye tracking in games Eye-tracking as an input First person shooters Noncommand input Educational games Quake 2: (Left) When the player looks at the robot standing on the left-hand side of the screen (Right) the virtual world rotates so that the robot is positioned at the centre of the screen [Smith and Graham, 2006]. The Little Prince Storyteller: The “Little Prince” gives a narration about the objects the user is looking at using synthesized speech [Starker and Bolt, 1990]. EyeChess: Gaze-based chess game that was developed to teach beginners how to play chess. Players play against the computer and try and checkmate the Black King in three moves. [Spakov, 2005].
Immersion, fun, and user experience are recognized to be important factors in any game genre, including educational gaming.
Study – 8 puzzle Shuffled at the start Target solution
Gaze input in 8-puzzle -auto Interaction methods Mouse Gaze-augmented Dwell-time
Gaze input in 8-puzzle -click Interaction methods Mouse
Gaze input in 8-puzzle -click Interaction methods Mouse Gaze-augmented
Gaze input in 8-puzzle -click Interaction methods Mouse Gaze-augmented Dwell-time
Study 36 participants Between subject design 3 starting configurations Usability lab Tobii ET1750 eye tracker
Results Question Dwell Time Gaze Aug. MouseX 2 (2)p 1 Did you like this interaction? How easy was it to control the game using this interaction? * 3 How natural was it to use this interaction? How immersive did you find the game using this interaction? * Average rating *
Results – participants’ quotes Mouse - It feels quite natural since I’m used to using the mouse Gaze-augmented - I wasn’t even aware that I was thinking Dwell-time - difficult to think and use the eyes at the same time, too much cognitive overload... I’m not used to the input method and had to concentrate too much
Conclusions Gaze-input methods received worse feedback on easiness and naturalness than the computer mouse Same feedback when considering user’s likes/dislikes More immersed when using the gaze-based input methods than when using a conventional mouse.
Tersia //Gowases,Roman Bednarik, Markku Tukiainen