Eye tracking

What is eye tracking? Eye tracking measures fixations It records reflections of infra red light from corneas Assumes what people are looking at, are what they are paying attention to Infra red Light Emitting Diodes Camera 17” screen

It’s valuable but not ‘plug’n’play’ Need well defined context so you can interpret results Good for specific areas such as search, navigation, decision making, initial attention Gathers data unobtrusively Does not require concurrent Think Aloud

Is online advertising effective? Do people notice ads? Which location is best? Comparing client and competitor Experimental design Shows if ads noticed Can tie with brand recall & recognition

Commercial research

Commonalities between commercial & academic Both concerned about what people do and how to feed research into design Both need to answer the question at hand

Pressures on commercial research Want it yesterday Don’t understand research methodology Political point-scoring Anti-user implementation Give me a definitive answer

Differences between academic & commercial Focus on validity and reliability Find more questions More paradigm, labelling differences Slower, more certainty Focus on utility Answer questions Less distinction between user research vs. design research Faster, less certainty AcademicCommercial

When commercial research goes bad Wizz-bang methodology™ Quick but rubbish findings

When commercial research is great ‘Shooting fish in a barrel’ It can touch many people A ‘force for good’