Eye Tracking

How does it work?

User Centric has two state-of-the-art eye tracking labs. We use special monitors with infrared technology, designed specifically for capturing eye movements. This technology allows participants to be comfortable, as they do not have to wear any devices on their head. Our eye trackers require minimal set-up time, are nearly invisible to the participants, and provide high quality of data.

Why use eye tracking?

We have applied eye tracking to a variety of projects, including commercial and informational Web sites, major search engines and portals, online advertising and online ad formats, product packaging, medication labels, and email advertising. By using eye movement measures to supplement data collected with more traditional user research methods (e.g., usability testing, user interviews), you can:

Determine what users find important or interesting and what they tend to ignore

Assess users' decision-making processes

Explain inefficient or ineffective performance

Identify search patterns and strategies

Evaluate the match between visual designs and business objectives

User Centric offers Eye Tracking for Package Design to help make packaging more noticeable, engaging, and convincing. Read more about this service.

Eye tracking can also help measure the branding impact of pay-per-click advertising. We offer Eye Tracking of PPC Ads - a service that tests the branding impact of different ad positions on search engine results pages. Other examples of User Centric eye tracking studies include: 1) Eye Tracking Bing vs. Google: A First Look and 2) Do Not Overlook the Importance of the Display URLs in PPC Ads.

What is the output of an eye tracking study?

Our eye tracking reports include:

Quantitative analysis including descriptive and inferential statistics for a variety of eye movement measures and pupil diameter

Qualitative analysis of the spatial and temporal aspects of users’ attention

Visualizations, such as attention maps ("heatmaps") illustrating gaze activity aggregated across users, images showing individual users' scanpaths, and movies replaying users’ eye movements

Questions?

If you have questions about our eye tracking services, please let us know! We would be happy to help.

Related news & publications:

Our research has been published in books and professional journals, and is presented regularly at conferences. Many of our articles and publications can be read online, downloaded in PDF format, or requested by e-mail.

Names in italics indicate User Centric employees at the time of publication.

User Centric (2010). Aga Bojko and Gavin Lew to Present at the Package Design & Development Summit.
User Centric (2010). Aga Bojko New Associate Managing Editor of the User Experience Magazine.
Lew, G. (2009). The Role of Eye Tracking in User Experience Research.
Webinar presented on behalf of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES)
User Centric (2009). The Role of Eye Tracking in User Experience Research.
User Centric (2009). Eye Tracking Bing vs. Google: A First Look.
Bojko, A., Schumacher, R. (2008). Eye Tracking and Usability Testing in Form Layout Evaluation. Proceedings of the 38th International Symposium of Business Forms Management Association (BFMA) 2008 Las Vegas, NV
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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.
Bojko, A., Buffardi, K., Lew, G., & Israelski, E. (2006). Eye Tracking Study on the Impact of the Manufacturer's Logo and Multilingual Description on Drug Selection Performance. Proceedings of the 50th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) San Francisco, CA
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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.
Bojko, A., Stephenson, A. (2006). A, B, or C? Comparing Layouts and Graphic Treatments Using Eye Movement Measures. Proceedings of the 15th Annual Conference of the Usability Professionals Association (UPA) Broomfield, CO
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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.
Bojko, A. (2006). Using Eye Tracking to Compare Web Page Designs: A Case Study. Journal of Usability Studies, Vol.1, No. 3
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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.
Bojko, A., Gaddy, C., Lew, G., Quinn, A., & Israelski, E. (2005). Evaluation of Drug Label Designs Using Eye Tracking. Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) Orlando, FL
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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.
Bojko, A. & Stephenson, A. (2005). It's All in the Eye of the User: How eye tracking can help answer usability questions. User Experience, Vol. 4, No. 1
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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.