Frequently asked questions

How does Tobii UX Explore use eye tracking?

Our eye tracking technology measures eye movements through the smartphone selfie camera, showing you exactly where users are looking and what is getting their attention. It allows you to experience your product or website through the eyes of your users and customers.

You can create your eye tracking test with Tobii UX Explore and invite participants to complete it on their smartphones (Android or iOS) - no additional hardware needed!

Once your test participants complete their tests, you get all the insights straight from our web platform. Use those insights to create a better experience for your users.

Why use Tobii UX Explore instead of other testing tools?

Eye tracking provides unique insights into how the participants engage with your product. It offers objective data about your user's behavior and allows you to delve into their actual responses to your product.

With Tobii UX Explore, you can easily create UX usability tests with the added benefit of eye tracking insights. You can run tests from home, skipping additional hardware and the complex setup required to complete studies in the laboratory. You can get the same data quality by creating a test on our web application and inviting your test participants to complete it on their own smartphones (Android or iOS).

They can participate from anywhere in the world, from the comfort of their homes, while you get the results as soon as they complete your test.

Much easier, much more affordable, and has the same in-lab quality!

How accurate is Tobii UX Explore compared to in-lab eye tracking?

Tobii UX Explore requires no additional software and can be used in participants' everyday environments – even so, it is as accurate as in-lab testing.

In our validation study, we analyzed the data accuracy from over 100 unsupervised participants across five continents. The results showed that Tobii UX Explore achieved an overall accuracy of 0.85 cm (measured by the distance of the fixations to the corresponding target position).

What attention insights can I get with Tobii UX Explore?

Eye tracking allows you to measure someone’s eye movements while they are interacting with a visual stimulus: an image, a video, a prototype, a website, and more. This offers relevant and reliable information about your users' behavior when interacting with your product.

Here are a few eye tracking insights you can get into your product:

Fixations

Fixation is when a test participant looks at a specific point over a certain period of time, which is highly correlated to a person's focus of attention. Therefore, longer fixations on a particular object will indicate that the user's attention has been caught, whereas shorter fixations will reveal areas of less interest to the participant.

Screen recordings with gaze and tap overlay

Replay of individual sessions will allow you to look through your users’ eyes and follow along on their journey through your product.

You can learn:

• Where do your users expect information or interactions?
• Does anything distract or confuse your users on their path?
• Is there any confusion around certain elements/information?

Heatmaps

Our static image heatmaps show you where your participants looked most frequently or for the longest duration. The red spots indicate keen attention in this area, while areas without red spots show less attention.

How can I gather additional insights with Tobii UX Explore?

In addition to eye tracking, Tobii UX Explore offers a variety of tools to assess your participants' data, experience, and opinion in more detail:

Survey questions

Add default survey questions to assess your participants’ demographic data or add custom multiple-choice questions to learn more detailed information about your users. Your test participants will answer these questions before starting your test. You can also integrate external surveys with your test.

Thinking-out-loud

Activating thinking-out-loud on a task helps you understand your participants’ experience even better while they navigate your page or prototype. They will be asked to speak their thoughts out loud during a task, which provides real-time insights during usability tests.

Taps

This shows where your participants tapped or clicked as they interacted with your product.

A/B testing

Create an A/B test to compare two versions of your product or compare your product to competitors.

Task ratings

Rating style questions after a task help you quickly assess your participants.
Was the task clear? Was it difficult to achieve?
You can define this question yourself to gather more user insights.

Duration

Tobii UX Explore calculates how long participants took to complete a task.

Device

Know exactly what device each of your participants used to complete your test.

Completion rate

Shows the number of participants that completed each task.

What can I test with Tobii UX Explore?

Eye tracking can be used on its own or combined with other qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to test your UX design.

‍These are some examples of what you can test with Tobii UX Explore:

Prototypes

Tobii UX Explore is compatible with most prototyping tools (Figma, Adobe XD, etc.). Simply insert the URL of your prototype into the task creation and define a task to complete.

Websites and web-applications

You can add the URL of any website or web app you want to test into the task creation. You get to understand exactly where your users look on your website.

Images

Testing on images allows you to understand how participants look at your stimulus. For images, you also get aggregated heatmaps as an insightful visualization of your participants’ attention. You can upload any image of up to 2 MB in the task creation.

Videos

You can upload any video of up to 20 MB in the task creation on the Tobii UX Explore platform.

What are the technical requirements to use Tobii UX Explore? What setup is necessary?

Browser: The Tobii UX Explore platform where you can create, manage, and analyze tests (optimized for Chrome).

App: The Tobii UX Explore app, where participants complete the test, works on any smartphone with Android 8, iOS 15, or the latest versions.

Permissions: On the app, the participant needs to grant access to the camera, screen recorder, and microphone.

Setup: With Tobii UX Explore, you can easily create eye tracking tests, skipping additional hardware and the complex setup required in the laboratory. Participants follow the app instructions with their smartphones to complete the test, which starts with positioning and eye calibration.

Internet: For the duration of the test, participants need a stable internet connection and even lighting.

Orientation: The app works only in portrait mode.

What integrations does Tobii UX Explore offer?

Tobii UX Explore allows you to integrate external surveys, recruitment panels.

External panel: If your test participants come from an external panel, you can keep track of them with our external participant ID feature, making it easier to link their results and manage their rewards.

Can I run a pilot test before launching the final version of my test?

Yes - the ‘review’ stage is made just for that. After you create a test, you can run a pre-test three times for free, to see what it will look like to your participants. This means you can check how your test looks in the Tobii UX Explore app, and see how data is collected and displayed in the web application or platform.

While in the ‘review’ stage, you can edit your test and make as many changes as you need. Once you are satisfied with how everything looks and want to start collecting data, you can launch it for your participants. Once you launch your test, the data collected during the review stage will be deleted (to avoid biased results), and you can launch the test with as many test participants as you need. When you launch your tests, the fees explained on the pricing page will apply.

Can I run tests on desktops and tablets?

For now, Tobii UX Explore offers a smartphone-only solution. With 73% of overall purchases being made on smartphones worldwide, this is our area of research focus.

Is it necessary to install the Tobii UX Explore app on the smartphone to run a test?

Yes, your test participants need to install the Tobii UX Explore app on their mobile phone to run a test.

The app is free, and your test participants won't need to create an account to use it.

How does Tobii UX Explore ensure the protection of personal data during tests, and what control do I have over my data as a participant?

Tobii UX Explore is firmly committed to GDPR standards for data protection. As a participant, your identity is safeguarded by using demographic and aggregated data, rather than personal identifiers such as name or email - a Tester ID is used to maintain your privacy.

Data collection begins only after you have downloaded our app, joined a test, and explicitly consented. You retain control over your data throughout; you may choose not to upload test results, and no data will be stored without your consent. Even after data upload, you can withdraw your consent at any time, and we will proceed to delete all of your data. Eye movements are only recorded during tests and with your express permission. All collected data is solely used for research and is deleted according to GDPR regulations.