What information are people “seeing” when your web page pops up? By Shirley Retz

 Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (where one is looking) or the motion of an eye relative to the head.  Eye tracking machines allows us to track the visual path of a person’s eye.

 Gaze direction and gaze point.  Eye-presence detection  Eye position  User identification  Eye closure  Eye movements and patterns  Pupil size and pupil dilation

 Improves user interfaces  Helps us to understand human behavior  Used in behavioral research and human response testing  Useful in medical diagnostics  Used in automotive and defensive industries to improve safety  The list continues to grow as researchers come up with more and more creative ways to use these devices.

 Designing Noticeable Bricklets by Tracking Users’ Eye Movemnets ◦ Djamasbi, S., Siegel, M., & Tullis,T. (2012).

 Recent research indicates that examining users’ viewing behaviors by tracking their eye movements is a useful method website designs.  Size, graphics, color, and location of information has an effect on how quickly information is seen and utilized by a user.  The focus of this study was on the design of bricklets, areas on a page that have spicific useful information making navigation faster and easier for a user.

 N= 40 (15 male, 25 female)  Various disciplines (business, legal, technology, sales, administrative)  Age=  Conducted as a between subjects study. Each group of participants saw only one prototype in each pair (S1 or S2, but not both)  Presented in randomized order

 8 web page prototypes (4 pairs) ◦ Each pair of prototypes differed only in one section: the bricklet under investigation

 Participants were then asked to complete a set of tasks that were directly associated with the bricklet under investigation. ◦ Ie. “You would like to start receiving s. Where would you go to start the process?” ◦ Answers to these tasks were located within the designated bricklets.

 Size: significant difference was not found in relation to size of bricklet  Graphic: Users noticed the bricklet with the graphic faster than the bricklet without the graphic.  Color: Bricklets without contrasting background color was noticed faster.  Location: No significant difference between the position (left or right ) of the bricklet.

 Eye tracking was useful in this study to: ◦ Determine where the participant looked ◦ How quickly they were able to find information needed (how fast their eye navigated to the correct information) ◦ Eye fixations (how long a participant looked at any given area. ◦ It provided useful information into the insight of visual attention of participants viewing habits

 Most of our evaluations are done so quickly, that our decisions become unconscious. Eye tracking allows some insight into these split decision processes.  It also provides researchers with useful information as to what we are attending to and processing.