What Eye Tracking Can't Do

Form design guidelines are numerous and easily accessible. However, very little published research exists to support these guidelines. Instead, they are based on the opinions of usability experts, their knowledge of human perception, and anecdotal evidence from internal testing with forms. This paper presents our efforts to empirically evaluate form design and better understand the underlying cognitive processes associated with layout.

We begin this paper with a brief overview of two form evaluation techniques, eye tracking and usability testing. We then describe the benefits of using them in conjunction. After an overview of previous form research, we present our systematic evaluation of five form layouts that differed in label and field positioning. The combination of usability and eye tracking measures used in the study (i.e., user behavior, eye movements, and self-report) allowed us to understand how each layout variation impacts form usability. We conclude the paper by discussing the limitations of our study and opportunities for further research.

This presentation details a study that was conducted with standardized Abbott drug labels for domestic and international cartons. The objective of the study was to use eye tracking to determine the appropriateness of two label elements: an additional Abbott logo and a multilingual drug description. The presentation describes the eye movement methods used and measures taken, as well as the results of the project, which indicated that the additional label elements could be safely introduced without hindering user performance.

Eye tracking can benefit user experience research by providing additional measures to assess and compare designs. This evaluation method can help us choose the design which ensures that users notice all key areas, facilitates the most efficient search and information processing, and/or poses the lowest cognitive resource demands on users.Using case studies as examples, this paper discusses how to design a comparative study, choose appropriate eye movement measures, and make recommendations based on complex findings.

A proposed design for the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Web site was evaluated against the original design in terms of the ease with which the correct starting points for tasks were located and used. The report details three task examples in which eye tracking helped diagnose errors and identify the better of the two designs (and the reasons for its superiority) when both were equally highly successful. Advantages and limitations of the application of eye tracking to design comparison are also discussed.

Eye movement measures and conventional performance metrics were used to compare existing drug labels to a new label template that was created based on human factors principles and user research. Twenty pharmacy practitioners were asked to locate a particular drug among others using sets of existing labels and their redesigned counterparts. For most tasks, the new design led to faster responses, either due to a decrease in the number of fixations required to complete a task or a decrease in the mean fixation length. The number and sequence of fixations within a single label and across labels (used as indicators of search efficiency) and fixation duration (used as a measure of information processing efficiency) provided insight into the origins of the noted speed improvements, helping assess which of the multiple design changes introduced in the new template had impact on performance. Application of eye tracking to redesign evaluation is discussed.

You conducted a usability study and found that users did not click on the only task-relevant link on the page. Did they not notice the link? Were they distracted by other elements? Did they see the link but not read the label? Did they read the label but not understand its meaning? What will you recommend? Increasing link visibility, decreasing page clutter, or changing the link label? Eye tracking can help answer these questions, filling the gaps left by conventional data collection methods.