Speakers' Abstracts
“How do I design an eye tracking study?” or “How many participants do I need for an eye tracking study?” are examples of questions we often hear. The correct answer is: “What would you do if this wasn’t an eye tracking study?” As a method, eye tracking in many of its aspects is not that special, and should be subject to the same research principles as any other data gathering technique is.
What is unique is the type of information eye tracking lets us access – visual attention, revealing users’ search strategies, decision making processes, cognitive workload, and interests. Unfortunately, most of this fascinating information is not useful because it is not actionable. As UX professionals, we conduct research to inform design and business decisions, and we need findings that will help us do that.
This talk will contest popular misconceptions about eye tracking as a method and provide a framework for generating actionable eye tracking insight.
In 2011 businesses and organisations can choose between a myriad of user testing techniques such as one on one interviews, focus groups, ethnographic user testing, task based user testing using conventional user testing software, eye tracking technology and even Neuromeasurement. Some folk combine all forms of user testing and also conduct extensive analytics using online surveys, BI analysis and studying website analytics (using tools such as Google Analytics).
Cyber-Duck conducted a short study using a small amount of users (11) to see which form of user testing technique uncovers more intelligence. Cyber-Duck benchmarked a Tobii T Series eye tracker against a more ‘conventional’ user testing software. The objective was to see if the eye tracking technology reveals more user experience issues and/or intelligence than conventional user testing software using a webcam.
Danny Bluestone is the managing director of Cyber-Duck Ltd, an award winning UK digital agency and UX consultancy.
Eye tracking has provided a means to capture data without the need to reply on concurrent verbal protocol. However, eye tracking still relies upon PEEP (Post Experience Eye Tracked Protocol) to post-evaluate experience together with users. In other words, the users explain why they looked at various visual objects (e.g. wireframe, images, videos, website etc). The problem of self report, concurrent or retrospective, is that users give their opinions with conscious minds, which are subject to cognitive biases and social influences. To understand how users really engage with a product or design, we need to move beyond these filters and attempt to access their raw, unfiltered emotional responses.
With this in mind, One to One Insight developed Quantemo, a tool that combines Tobii eyetracking data with neurological traces (16 channels EEG) using the Emotiv Epoch (pronounced: ee-pok) neurological headset. The Emotiv headset has proven to be a reliable device in EEG acquisition and interpretation. For data interpretation, we rely on Emotiv’s proprietary algorithms to decode the EEG signals allowing different emotional indices such as frustration, engagement, excitement and meditation to be analysed.
By combining the Tobii eyetracking data with Emotiv neurological indices, it is now possible to complete real-time analysis of various temporal stimuli (e.g. TV commercial, in-gaming advertising, etc.) and non-temporal stimuli (e.g. web pages, banner ads, marketing media).
Some key challenges in developing Quantemo were to build upon the visualisation capabilities of Tobii, thus enabling neurological data to be visualised in real-time, to ensure that both data sources were synchronised, and that a means of analysing the data could be completed in an efficient and effective (robust and reliable) manner.
Quantemo therefore has two components:
• Quantemo viewer (Real-time visualisation): The viewer displays and records real-time data from Emotiv headset, and also embeds the Tobii Live viewer windows within a single screen, allowing researchers to view and analyse gaze trail data and different neurological indices, such as frustration, engagement, excitement and meditation.
• Quantemo dashboard (Post-session detailed analysis): The dashboard (a cloud based application) allows more detailed analysis to be conducted, e.g. difference of engagement level between population variables – gender, age, etc.
This presentation/paper will describe a recent One To One Insight project in which Quantemo was used to directly compare the visual design aspects of several online checkout processes to identify usability issues and level of emotional engagement.
We perform almost all of our eye tracking research at the offices of our clients or out 'on the street'. Although a specialised lab at our office does sound fancy, we choose to carry our equipment around the country for a number of reasons. In this presentation I will outline our reasons, our method and show a couple of cases.
At Miratech, we were interested in finding out how reading patterns differ between an iPad and a printed newspaper. For the purposes of our study, we used the iPad and printed versions of the same French newspaper. We used eye tracking technology to monitor the eye activity of the participants, and we measured how well they remembered the articles and ads they had seen. We then drilled down further to determine the average overall reading time for each medium, the number of articles read, and the number of ads looked at. In this talk we reveal our results.
In a candid presentation, Guy will reflect on the last 12 months of eye tracking innovation and research at SimpleUsability. Sharing details about the evolution of their platform for eye tracking mobile devices, international collaboration with other Tobii users, in-store retail & concept research, EEG and customer perception of eye tracking services.
Tobii Technology launched its new, re-designed corporate website in early 2011. As part of the development project to create the new site, GfK SirValUse Consulting supported Tobii with a multi-method usability study to ensure the new site fulfilled customer expectations. Sara Hyléen from Tobii and Ruth von Appen from GfK SirValUse will share their experiences of the project, touching on such topics as how the usability study was designed and carried out, the results of the study, how they were implemented in the development project, and more.
Usability studies and research projects were conducted long before Eye Tracking arrived as the prominent research tool. Eye Tracking has significantly contributed to past research methodologies, in several important parameters, for example:
- A new level of data has been gathered, be it audio or video, behavioral or verbal. The new data has to be analyzed using new methods in order to extract UX insights it enables us
- Previous data can be thoroughly examined and conclusions can be either reinforced or rebutted with the help of eye tracking
After conducting dozens of UX research projects in the previous years, we have developed a unique methodology to analyze the data and present it to the customer. Presenting the results have proven to be a challenge, mainly because customers are not proficient in the unique powers of eye tracking, and also due to the challenge of analyzing huge amounts of data. During our experience we have developed and perfected an "Eye Tracking Presentation Methodology", which is accompanied with impressive and professional deliverables to the customer, which include a "Research Presentation" and an "Executive Summary". Our ways of presenting the results gives an added value to our customers and allows us to convey our hard work in a robust manner and emphasize the need of future researches.
The nonverbal messages and communication given by anchor women in news broadcasts - by wearing certain outfits or styles of makeup - are important factors in attracting the attention of viewers. This research tested how their outfits and makeup as nonverbal communication influence news information processing. It was examined how the anchor women's costume and makeup affected the audience’s gaze behavior and news acceptance. 16 participants exposed to 2 (nonverbal cues - sexy vs. humble look) x 3 (news) between-subject design stimuli. Differences in nonverbal communication were manipulated in two conditions by stressing the differences in the anchor women's outfit and makeup: one with sexy/glamorous clothes and accessories and the other with humble clothes and accessories. When the newscaster was wearing sexy/glamorous clothes, makeup and accessories, average gaze time was higher than when she was not. The results indicate that when there are not any notable nonverbal signals, people tend to focus on the face of the anchor woman, and then they avert their eyes to the background. In addition, participants could recall more facts from the news when the anchor woman did not wear a fancy costume or accessories.
This presentation describes a study in which 58 users’ ocular data have been collected while looking at search engines results pages (SERPs). The aim of the research was to understand how users distribute their time in the SERP and compare this pattern between two groups of tasks: those which have been successfully finished by the users and those for which they have revealed not to have found satisfactory information.
At the end of second quarter 2010 the apple iPad has gained a 95 percent share sales of tablet PCs. As a main reason for the breakthrough of the iPad we consider its outstanding multi-touch display, which had not been available for previous tablet PCs. Running the same operating system as the earlier iPod or iPhone, one core component comes into awareness of the user: applets.
Ongoing debates about the iPad even amplify its popularity. To gauge user experience with the iPad and scientifically approach an understanding of how people deal with the iPad, we tested 12 users in Europe (UK and Germany). Target domains were social media (Facebook) and German and English eJournals, such as the magazine “Iconist” (announced as the first iPad-only magazine).
Scope of our study was to gather explicit user statements (survey questions plus in-depth interviews) based on conventional usability methods combined with implicit user behavior extracted from neurological data (EEG, GSR) and eye tracking analysis.
Results of the study give ample evidence for interaction turning invisible mainly based on touch interaction, which is not requiring visual attention anymore. Buttons and keys for navigation eventually disappear and after getting used to “the new style”, users more easily handle the tested applications.
Collecting data from several sources gives unique insight in the true state of the website. In this talk, Thor will present findings from a client case concerning a large governement website, where eye-tracking, web statistics and surveys were used to properly asses the quality of the website. The combined findings from this project gave insights that would not have been found without this array of research methods.
The Nintendo Wii caused a step change in the gaming experience by introducing a movement dimension. More recently, the Microsoft Kinect system has taken things further in allowing the user to be the controller, through it's a new gesture control system.
User Vision has undertaken research into whether the new interaction patterns demanded by the Kinect are easy and intuitive for users and how the learnability of these impacts on the user satisfaction and game performance.
Our study combines results collected from the Tobii eye-tracking glasses with data around perceived ease of use and satisfaction to understand how learning the interaction patterns affects their game performance.
For years we tried to get a hold on the shopper decision tree by traditional quantitative and qualitative research techniques using verbal measures (U&A, diary method, in shop observations etc.). Nevertheless, the proliferation of SKU’s turns the shop into a real jungle of visual stimuli where consumers more than ever take decisions intuitively driven by emotions and their memory based equity in a split second. The only way to get hold on this unconscious process is using objective measures in combination with quantitative and qualitative research. In this presentation, she will guide you through our Sens-Pack model in an interactive way based on case studies.
It is mainly through research on driver performance that a lot is known about the effect of alcohol on sensory, perceptual and motor behaviour as well as on more complex cognitive functioning such as e.g. divided attention. The study at hand aimed to find out more about the acute effect of alcohol on perception and recollection, using stationary eye tracking in a setting where alcohol consumption is socially accepted, even conventional: watching a football match.
The marketing industry has amassed a wealth of knowledge over the last few years of how to design hard working emails across all sectors B2C and B2B, that get opened and acted on, backed up by extensive numerical analysis of those emails to continuously learn from and refine. From this rich data we have learnt how to design better emails for their audiences and how to analyse every click through.
Leading integrated marketing agency Red C have invested in the latest Tobii wide screen eye-tracker to put some science behind our email design expertise and understand email viewing behaviour.
Red C have monitored people eye-tracking a variety of emails across a variety of consumer sectors, both for comparison purposes within that sector and multiplied to across the different sectors to give us some general learnings. Be the first to learn about our findings which will help to drive email design and usability to the next level.
International Usability Testing Partnership (IUTP) Annual Meeting
By Anne Jansen, IUTP
IUTP is an international network, founded in 2008, in which usability companies and educational institutes collaborate. IUTP aims to promote the expertise and understanding of HCI, facilitate international studies , and promote the quality of services in the field of HCI.
During this meeting new board members will be elected, and a chairman, a secretary and a treasurer will be appointed. We will also discuss the strategic plan for the upcoming year.
All those who are or want to become a member of IUTP are welcome to join this meeting.
