Understanding Usability

Tobii are doing some cool stuff! Check it out. Particularly Leo's laugh - she's from support ;)

Tobii today unveiled the world’s first laptop with integrated eye control. The prototype laptop has been developed in collaboration with computer manufacturer Lenovo and will be shown publicly for the first time at CeBIT in Hannover, March 1-5.

Here's a video thanks to Engagdet

Read the press release

Internationally, eye tracking is revolutionising the way in which market research is conducted to gain measurable insights across advertising, packaging and shopper research.

The NEW Tobii eye tracking glasses allow wearers to walk around freely, making it easier for researchers to create a real-world environment in which to capture natural user behaviour.

Objective are running 2 launch events to demonstrate the NEW Tobii eye tracking glasses. We will also demonstrate the Attention Tool eye tracking software for market research.

International guest speaker, film director and eye tracking expert, Juan Pablo Rodriguez from EyeOnMedia will be presenting case studies on his use of eye tracking within market research.

Book your place!

Mon Nov 29th, 5pm – 6.30pm Level 1, 530 Lonsdale St, Melbourne

Thur Dec 2nd, 5pm – 6.30pm Level 10, 220 George Street, Sydney

(Drinks and light refreshments will be provided) 

Please RSVP by emailing jbreeze@ObjectiveDigital.com

Objective is the Australasian reseller for Tobii eye tracking hardware and software and iMotions Attention Tool eye tracking software.

Tobii Technology is the world leader in eye tracking hardware and software www.Tobii.com

iMotions Attention Tool® is the world leading eye tracking software within market research and the application combines eye tracking metrics, reading metrics and emotion metrics.

Sometimes it can be very hard to recruit participants for usability testing!

Recently, our long term client, SAI GLOBAL Property Services (previously Espreon), needed to test its new, 'game changing', self service property settlement booking system with a representative sample of solicitors and legal practice managers.  These users are so hard to track down! We just couldn't find any to book into a testing session at our lab in George St, Sydney.

So we went to them:

at the Australian Legal Practice Managers Association (ALPMA) Conference where SAI GLOBAL was sponsoring and had a booth.

This was a really successful method of accessing people who's time is precious. In one day Joanna Lewis was able to test with 12 people in sessions ranging from 20 - 45 minutes. She accessed 5 solicitors, 2 legal practice managers  and 5 SAI GLOBAL employees. A perfect number to give us valuable feedback on the final version of their interactive and graphically designed prototype site. 

I went along to the session to help invite participants into the stand for the testing session while Joanna was busy. However, the SAI GLOBAL sales staff did my job for me! One woman in particular recruited all of the key users we needed!!  And recruiting was easy because people were keen to see the eye tracker in action!

Of course the Tobii T60 eye tracker that we used is portable and we could quickly set it up in the morning before people arrived.  We used the Retrospective Think Aloud (RTA) protocol [pdf].This meant that, whilst people were using the complex online application, we could leave them alone to focus on the task at hand.

We had originally planned to test the system using 2 tasks, but soon realised participants wanted to leave once the first task was completed.  So we got participants to complete the process straight through, as one task. When they were finished Joanna replayed them their eye gaze video to stimulate discussion and gain insights on how to improve the prototype. Final discussion questions also had to be speedy - just likes and dislikes.

Here's a heat map that we created after the testing to demonstrate some of the findings to the SAI GLOBAL executive.

As a bonus for SAI GLOBAL, the eye tracker meant that sales staff could actively engage with customers during the conference and describe what Joanna was doing.  This helped get people into the stand and demonstrated that SAI GLOBAL care about how their applications are designed, making sure customers find it easy to use. Also, the sales staff were actively engaged in the research process. I am sure that they will use the experiences of the day regularly in future sales meetings! And we have already received feedback from a very happy CEO!

People who think that operating an eye tracker is hard, time consuming and requires lots of technical understanding are wrong.

If you can drive a usability testing tool like Morae or Silverback; or if you can drive a design program, then you can use eye tracking software. If you can create an online survey or roll out a social network you can use eye tracking software. So long as it it a Tobii eye tracker.

Here's two training videos on the Tobii Studio software:

If you want to use one at our EyeTrackLab for the day, let us know by emailing jbreeze@objectivedigital.com.

Of course, it is important that you have experience in usability test facilitation and setting up great research projects!

Visit our website for more user experience FAQs

On June 22, 2010 Tobii launched a new revolutionary eye tracker: Tobii Glasses. This is the first head mounted, or wearable eye tracker from Tobii. Just like all of the other eye trackers from Tobii, Glasses is taking eye tracking to the next level. Unlike other wearable eye tracking systems Glasses is very lightweight (Glasses 75 grams plus recording assistant 200 grams), just like wearing a pair of sun glasses and an iPod. This is not the only revolutionary thing about Tobii:

Glasses, the real leap forward is the ease of use and the ability to aggregate eye tracking data which enables you to conduct quantitative eye tracking studies which is really unique for a wearable eye tracker.  To be able to do this Tobii has developed a new technology called AOA-Track with small markers that emits infrared light. By placing these IR-markers around objects and/or areas you want to study in depth, Tobii Glasses automatically knows when a person is looking within these areas and will automatically aggregate the data from all the participants in an eye tracking study. This is truly amazing! Previously when doing this kind of research it has required a lot of manual coding work to be able to do this, now it all happens automatically and you are able to use the analysis software Tobii Studio to analyze the data just as if it was recorded with a stationary eye tracker. In other words you can create visualizations like heat maps and gaze plots, calculate statistics etc automatically with data from a Tobii Glasses recording.

The device also includes a microphone and of course a camera filming everything the participant is looking at so it can also be used for qualitative studies (you just watch the recording as a video with the gaze point overlaid) and might even enable new research methodologies, what do you say about “Concurrent Think Aloud Walking” in usability research for example!

To learn more about the Tobii Glass please visit these resources online:

Video about how to use Tobii Glasses for Market Research:
http://www.tobiiglasses.com/marketresearch/

Video about how to use Tobii Glasses in Scientific Research:

http://www.tobiiglasses.com/scientificresearch/

Tobii Glasses Product Leaflet (pdf)

Tobii Glasses product page on Tobii.com here

Examples

These are some examples from Tobii Glasses recordings Tobii did in a Supermarket.

Watch a shopper in a supermarket being eye tracked in the YouTube video below

This is a Gaze Plot showing how a person is searching for a product on the shampoo shelf. IR-markers have been placed on the shelf to enable us to collect the data.

This is another shelf, the heat map shows the aggregated data from 30 recordings and reveals where people look when deciding which product to buy. IR-markers have been placed on the shelf (try to find them!) to enable us to aggregate the data and make this heat map.

YouTube video describing Tobii Glasses

This is a copy of our UXMag.com guest post. Thanks UXMag!

Eye Tracking: Best Way to Test Rich App Usability | UX Magazine

Eye tracking has recently been debated on many fronts, with a particular focus on the ways people misuse it, and how some use eye tracking only as a way to "wow" clients. In our experience, however, it's invaluable in bringing to light key findings that are otherwise unattainable through other user testing methods. Eye tracking offers UX people the ability to:

• Leave a participant alone during a test to focus on the task at hand, and therefore
• Capture real physiological data about their conscious and unconscious experiences. This data is unique to eye tracking.

Eye Tracking for Rich Applications

Recently eye tracking has been heavily used in website design and testing. When I became involved about eight years ago, the sites tested were mainly flat HTML. Researchers were able to produce beautiful heat maps that were useful for comparing and optimising simple screen layouts and online advertising placements.

The invention of rich, interactive, and transactional interfaces, however, has meant producing eye tracking results is now more complex. Each interface has multiple states and people can interact in pretty much whatever way they like. People can choose their own way through a task to completion and the eye trackers can't tell which state is what as a person's eyes are tracked. Additional analysis is now required to separate these interactions, and fortunately eye tracking technologies have advanced to make this process relatively simple.

If this new level of sophisticated analysis is not achieved, this will result in eye tracking data being misused and eye tracking will retain (inappropriately) its novelty status.

Usability Testing Fraternities Lock Horns

Think Aloud

Think Aloud (TA) is an age-old usability testing method. People are asked to speak their thoughts, feelings, and opinions during a set of usability testing tasks. This is done with the help of the facilitator, who “skilfully interrupts" the process frequently to find out why people do particular things during the test.

In my opinion, when people are faced with lots of interactions on screen, considerable cognitive effort is required. Adding TA to this experience will inappropriately add more cognitive load to the task that would not normally be present. This can lead to misleading additional eye fixations and dwell times on outputs, which clouds the analysis. Often a poor facilitator will prompt users to the next stage (when was the last time someone knocked on your door and helped you find the right button when you browsed at home?), again spoiling the desired realism while testing.

We know there are three types of memory “storage" systems: sensory memory, short term, and long term. Our sensory memory retains an exact copy of what is seen or heard, and is generally thought to last between 300ms and a few seconds. Our short-term memory tends to remember between five and nine “items" (George Miller, et al) of information. If we start to talk about our actions in a TA protocol, these precious (milli) seconds and snapshots of information are quickly forgotten or overwritten. After that, what are they basing their commentary on?

Eye Tracking

There has been considerable debate about the usefulness of usability testing with eye tracking. Many TA proponents claim their methods, when carefully performed, will find enough issues compared with eye tracking, which they consider to be too difficult, time consuming, and expensive to bother about.

To my mind, this criticism arises from a situation where some people use eye tracking to make wild claims about how all websites should be designed. These can be found in numerous blog posts written that offer tips and guidelines. These include 23 Actionable Lessons From Eye-Tracking Studies, Web Form Design Guidelines: An Eyetracking Study, and Eyetracking Study Reveals 12 Website Tactics. These articles have been widely referenced and retweeted; however, they should be taken with a grain of salt. Without a clear understanding of the methodology used, the information should simply be seen as an investigative tool in your design process, not as the Holy Grail.

Of particular concern is Jakob Nielsen's F-pattern research. This was produced in 2006 and I regularly hear it mentioned in design meetings in Australia. This study was done using the regular TA protocol, which means that participants' eye gaze data is very likely not valid because they were talking to the experimenter during the study. Try doing an everyday task like driving, cooking, or cleaning while all along the way verbalising every little step, and see how your behaviour (actions, methods, or time to complete) is affected.

Retrospective Think Aloud

Retrospective Think Aloud is another usability testing method that has been used for many years. In this case, participants give their opinions of a task after it is completed and the interview is recorded for later reference. Of course, it is hard to remember what you did during a task.

Retrospective TA with eye tracking (RTA) is a method in which participants are quickly calibrated on the eye tracker and then asked to do the testing task without interruption from the facilitator. In fact, the facilitator can even leave the room during a test. Following the test, the facilitator immediately asks the participant to score their experience and then replays the eye gaze video of the participant's experience to them. This replay of their eye gaze triggers the person's memory of what they did, thereby mitigating the memory issue. Expanding on this, the eye gaze can also be removed to ask what the participant thought they looked at before revealing their actual interactions.

Think Eyetracking, an early adopter of the RTA eye tracking protocol (which they renamed PEEP), have published a jointly researched academic paper with Lancaster University, UK. Their academic article can be downloaded on the Think Eyetracking Blog. They also had a very popular blog post about it in 2008 that generated some controversy.

Below are some eye tracking heat maps created by Think Eyetracking that show a comparison of a Google search task done with TA (on the left) and RTA (on the right). Note the dramatic differences! It is obvious that the behaviour is very different, with long dwell times and numbers of fixations apparent in the TA output, probably caused by the participants staring at and browsing the screen while verbalising their actions.

Recently, Tobii Technology from Sweden created a unique feature in their Tobii Studio software where during the eye gaze replay stage of the test, the software records a video and audio record of the participant and facilitator as they review the eye tracking session. This can be paused, replayed, and scrubbed to allowing a full detailed analysis of the session with both visual and audio cues. Find out more about RTA on Scribd or watch this video:

Usability labs are set up to approximate real life. We regularly see experimenters set up their testing facilities like offices or lounge rooms to make the person feel at home. TA asks people to talk to someone while they are busy doing a task—where's the real life in that?

Eye tracking is the only real way to test a rich application without distracting the participant.

See Where People Looked, Not Where They Think They Looked

Here are some examples from our recent work at Objective Digital.

We allow people to complete tasks in a focused way, and also obtain real physiological data about what they are doing. It is difficult to argue with and almost impossible to fake these measures. We are not making assumptions about what they looked at and in what order things captured their attention. Some recent client projects encouraged us to use eye tracking to identify:

1. Where do people look first?
2. What don't they look at?
3. What they looked at before the usability issue occurred?
4. How people learn an interface?

1. Where Do People Look First?

Very simply, eye tracking can tell us exactly what caught people's attention first on a screen. Jay Eskenazi put this very clearly in a comment on the IxDA forum in 2009:

Eye tracking measures unconscious behavior—and provides data that people simply cannot verbalize in other common user research methods, especially TA usability testing protocols. Decades of psychology research show that much human behavior occurs at an unconscious level.

The human eye, for example, can make up to 5 fixations per second and this occurs below people's level of conscious awareness. So in a 30 second scan of a typical homepage, the customer may be looking at up to 150 items on the page. Your customers (or research participants) simply cannot verbally tell you where their eyes are going and this is exactly the value that good eye tracking data provides.

Our experience is that visual attention data IS correlated with behavioral performance metrics. If people don't "see" something, then they are less likely to click it.

2. What They Don't Look At

Case study 1: Eye tracking shows what things on the screen people didn't look at. Importantly, the data revealed what space was being wasted in the design and what areas of the page were essentially ignored.

Recently, when we tested an internal CRM application for a finance company, eye tracking proved that customer service staff ignored the very information the company wanted them to focus on. In the task, they weren't even required to click on the screen.

The image here shows clearly that in the first few seconds of usage staff focused primarily on the bottom right rather than the bottom left where they were meant to focus. This would not have been observable if simply interviewing them. Considering this screen is used 300,000 times per day, any improvements to the design that make the correct part of the screen more obvious will drive positive outcomes for the finance company's customer service.

Joanna Lewis, whom I work with, recently wrote a blog post about what people ignore.

3. What They Looked at Before the Usability Issue Occurred

Only with eye tracking can we see all the options that people consider, even unconsciously, before starting and completing a specific task.

Eye tracking shows you where people immediately look on a screen. Yes, they can find a target and do a usability task just fine. But where did they look first, especially for ecommerce where time taken can force customers to leave you or stay? Rob Tannen puts this very clearly:

[Eye tracking] does have value as a secondary diagnostic tool. In the context of usability testing, eye tracking does not determine the presence of a usability problem, but helps determine what led to that problem in conjunction with performance data, facilitator observations and user self-reporting.

Case study 2: As the video clearly shows, this user was looking everywhere except at the Donate area on the right. After looking at the navigation both at the side and at the top, the rest of the page was viewed but at no point did the user focus on the Donate area in the main image. It clearly highlights the fact that this call-to-action does not stand out in the prototype, and users are also expecting to see something within the navigation. Equally, the heat map below gives an indication where all six people we tested would expect to see this link.

Case study 3: When users were asked to change one of the options on this screen, the eye tracking heat map below showed very clearly where they were expecting to go. People did not see the areas they were supposed to (indicated in red). Eye tracking of the first second they looked at the screen allowed us to make the site more efficient as it clearly indicated where the functionality should have been positioned.

The heat map below shows the first second of eye tracking on a prototype applicaiton. Users were heavily fixated on one area of the screen, and it can be assumed that this is where they were expecting to find the function they were asked to look for (the buttons).

This experience can also be seen in our financial institution case study.

How Do People Learn an Interface?

Eye tracking is also useful for change management and training when a new system is introduced to staff within a business.

Where do people look the first time they see an application? How about the second time, and the third time? Eye tracking shows very clearly how people learn to interact with a system.

Case study 4:
A new user visiting the website

The new user is seen to skip back and forth between the right hand side panel and the selections and information on the main part of the page to complete the task.

A frequent user of the website

The frequent user skips back and forth less frequently than the new user and is more focused on completing the task.

An expert user of the website

The expert user is highly focused and directed and completes the task with minimum effort.

This example was again from the banking CRM case study. The client even used an eye tracking video as part of the training package for customer service reps. It was used to show them the best way to look at the interface the instant a customer identifies themselves at a branch.

Role-Played Customer Service

The eye tracking data gathered from the CRM examples above was gathered during a simulated customer service interaction. The bank branch staff member was tracked during a 45-minute role-played customer interview. Afterward, the usability issues were discussed when the staff member's eye gaze and screen interactions were replayed to him. I can't think of any other way to do this type of test that essentially involves three people: participant, role-played customer, and facilitator.

Commonly Reported Eye Tracking Advantages

Eye tracking offers unique advantages above and beyond traditional TA. Other widely known advantages include:

1. A more relaxed testing environment where participants give feedback in their own time, and actually find more usability errors.
2. Executives like eye tracking because it produces compelling physiological data that can't be argued with.
3. Real time eye tracking data also provides for a better observation experience. I frequently find that if I am observing a participant's gaze data in real time while they complete their tasks, I am better engaged and glean more detailed insights about the user interface.

In TA, sometimes it can be very hard to see what a person is talking about during the test. I once mentioned this to a TA proponent and they suggested that if the TA is managed well it wouldn't be a problem. During the test, they would have the test facilitator ask the participant to hover their mouse over the part of the screen they are describing so that the observers can see what is being discussed. I'm sorry, but this just means the participant gets even more distracted from the task at hand.

Understanding eye tracking requires an insight into:

1. How the eye works?
2. Why the eye moves?
3. What do we study in eye tracking?
4. How do eye trackers work?

This content is taken from the Tobii blog that we administer and  white paper on Scribd.

1. How does the eye work?

Our eyes have many similarities with how a photo camera works: Light reflected from an object or a scene travels into our eyes through a lens. This lens concentrates and projects the light on to a light sensitive surface located on the back of a closed chamber. However, unlike a camera, the light sensitive surface (which in the eye is called the retina, see below) is not equally sensitive everywhere.

The retina is a light sensitive structure inside of the eye responsible for transforming light into signals, which are later converted into an image by the visual cortex in the brain. The fovea is a section of the retina that contains a high density of both kinds of light receptor cells found in the eye, i.e. Cone and Rod cells. Rod cells, which are mostly located in the outer retina, have low spatial resolution, support vision in low light conditions, do not discriminate colors, are sensitive to object movement and are responsible for the peripheral vision. Cone cells, which are densely packed within the central visual field, function best in bright light, process acute images and discriminate colors.

Through evolution, our eyes have been designed to work in both dark and light environments as well as providing both detail and quick changes in what we see. This has led to certain compromises, e.g., that we can only see details clearly in a limited part of our visual field (in the eye called the foveal area). The larger part of our visual field (the peripheral area) is better adapted to low light vision, and to detect movements and register contrasts between colors and shapes. The image produced by this area is blurry and less colorful. Between these two areas we find a region of transition called the para-foveal area, in which the image becomes gradually more blurry as we move from the fovea into the peripheral area (see below).

This figure is a schematic representation of the human visual field. The main area that is in focus, F, corresponds to the area where we direct our gaze to – the foveal area. As is illustrated in this image, the foveal area is not circular. Hence, the area in focus will have a slightly irregular shape as well. Within the rest of the visual field (the para‐foveal and peripheral areas) the image we perceive is blurry and thus harder to interpret and discriminate in high detail.

The cause of the differences in our visual field is the two different kinds of light receptor cells available in the eye, i.e. the rods and the cone cells. About 94% of the receptor cells in the eye are rods. As mentioned previously, the peripheral area of the retina is not very good at registering color and providing a sharp image of the world. This is because this area is mostly covered by rods. Rods do not require much light in order to work, but do, on the other hand, only provide a blurred and colorless image of our surroundings. For more detailed and clear vision, our eyes are also equipped with light receptor cells called cones which make up about 6% of the total number of light receptor cells in our eyes. Cones are, in the human eye, most often available in three different varieties; one that registers blue colors, one that registers green and one that registers red. While being efficient in providing a clear picture, the cones do require much more light in order to function. Hence, when we look at things when it’s dark around us, we lose the ability to see color and use mainly information registered by rods, providing us with a grey scale image. Cones are mostly found within the fovea where they are tightly packed in order to provide as clear an image as possible.

2. Why do our eyes move?

Often in articles on human vision and eye tracking accuracy, we come across measurements expressed in visual angle, e.g. the size of the foveal area is estimated to be 1-2° visual angle, or remote eye trackers have an accuracy between 1-0.5°. (Note: A smaller angle means less inaccuracy.) When we point a flashlight on a wall in a dark room we can observe that the light forms a projection on the wall. The size and shape of this projection is related to the size of the light source and the distance that you stand from the wall. The reason the distance affects the size of the projection is because the light disperses at a specific angle from the source. Hence, if we wish to specify the size of the projection area using a standard size measure (e.g. cm or cm2) of that flashlight we would always have to specify the distance at which it was measured. However, if we use the angle of dispersion as size indicator we can easily calculate the projection size for multiple distances using simple trigonometry. The same rationality applies to our visual field as images are formed through the projection of light on the retina, i.e. our eye works as a reversed flashlight that absorbs light instead of emitting it.

The human visual field spans about 220 degrees and is, as previously mentioned, divided in 3 main regions: foveal, parafoveal, and peripheral region. We primarily register visual data through the foveal region which constitutes less than 8% of the visual field.

Even though this represents only a small part of our field of vision, the information registered through the foveal region constitutes 50% of what is sent to the brain through our optic nerve. Our peripheral vision has a very poor acuity, which is illustrated above, and is only good for picking up movements and contrasts. Thus when we move our eyes to focus on a specific region of an image or object, we are essentially placing the foveal region of the eye on top of the area which is currently within main focus of the lens in our eye. This means that we are consequently maximizing our visual processing resources on that particular area of the visual field which also has the best image due to the optic characteristics of the eye. By letting the foveal region register the image, the brain get the highest resolution possible for the image of the interesting area to process as well as the most amount of data registered by the eye about that area. Hence, the brain is able to present the best possible image of the area we find interesting to us.

Click to view large

Rather than perceiving an object or a scene as a whole we fixate on relevant features that attract our visual attention, and construct the scene in our visual cortex using the information acquired during those fixations.

Eye movements have 3 main functions which are considered important when we process visual information:

1. Place the information that interests us on the fovea. To do this, fixations and saccades are used. A fixation is the pause of the eye movement on a specific area of the visual field; and saccades the rapid movements between fixations.
2. Keep the image stationary on the retina in spite of movements of the object or one’s head. This movement is commonly called a smooth pursuit.
3. Prevent stationary objects from fading perceptually. Movements used for this are called microsaccades, tremors and drift.

3. What do we study when we use eye tracking data?

What is visual attention?

Whenever we look at the world, we consciously or unconsciously focus only on a fraction of the total information that we could potentially process, in other words we perform a perceptual selection process called attention. Visually this is most commonly done by moving our eyes from one place of the visual field to another; this process is often referred to as a change in overt attention – our gaze follows our attention shift. Even though we prefer to move our eyes to shift our attention, we are also capable to move our mind’s attention to the peripheral areas of our visual field without eye movements. This mechanism is called covert attention. Although we can use these two mechanisms separately they most frequently occur together. An example is when we are looking at a city landscape and we first use our covert attention to detect a shape or movement in our visual field that appears to be interesting and use our peripheral vision to roughly identify what it is. We then direct our gaze to that location allowing our brain to access more detailed information. Thus a shift of our overall attention is commonly initiated by our covert attention quickly followed by a shift of our overt attention and the corresponding eye movements.

How fast is human visual perception?

In addition to only having a very limited sharp field of vision, our eyes are also fairly slow at registering changes in images compared to the update frequency of a modern computer screen. Research has shown that the retina needs about 80 ms of seeing a new image before that image is registered in normal light conditions. This doesn’t mean that we consciously have noticed any changes – only that the eye has registered a change. The ability to register an image is also dependent on the light intensity of that image. This can be compared with a photographic camera where a short shutter speed, in a badly lit environment results in a dark and blurred image, where hardly anything can be seen. However, if taking an image of something which is very well lit, e.g. a window, the shutter speed can be very short without this problem occurring. In addition to needing time to register an image, the eye also requires time for the image to disappear from the retina. This is also dependent on the light intensity. One example of this is when being exposed to a very bright light such as a camera flash where the image of the flash stays on the retina long after the flashing has ended.

In addition to the light sensitivity of the eye, how fast we perceive something we are looking at also depends on what we are observing. When reading in normal light conditions, it has been observed that most people only need between 50-60 ms of seeing a word in order to perceive it. However, when looking at, e.g., a picture people need to see it for more than 150 ms before being able to interpret what they are seeing.

Most eye tracking studies aim to identify and analyze patterns of visual attention of individuals when performing specific tasks (e.g. reading, searching, scanning an image, driving, etc.). In these studies eye movements are typically analyzed in terms of fixations and saccades. During each saccade visual acuity is suppressed and, as a result, we are unable to see at all. We perceive the world visually only through fixations. The brain virtually integrates the visual images that we acquire through successive fixations into a visual scene or object (see the image above). Furthermore we are only able to combine features into an accurate perception when we fixate and focus our attention on them. The more complicated, confusing or interesting those features are the longer we need to process them and, consequently, more time is spent fixating on them. In most cases we can only perceive and interpret something clearly when we fixate on an object or are very close to it. This eye–mind relationship is what makes it possible to use eye movement measurements to tell something about human behavior.

4. How do eye trackers work?

The process of eye tracking is, from a technical point of view, divided into two different parts: registering the eye movements and presenting them to the user in a meaningful way. While the eye tracker records the eye movements sample by sample, the software running on the computer is responsible for interpreting the fixations within the data. This blogpost aims at explaining the principles used in Tobii Eye Trackers in order to track the participant’s eye movements.

Pupil Centre Corneal Reflection technique (PCCR) A light source is used to cause reflection patterns on the cornea and pupil of the test person. A camera will then be used to capture an image of the eye. The direction of the gaze is then calculated using the angles and distances.

How are the eye movements tracked?

Eye tracking has long been known and used as a method to study the visual attention of individuals. There are several different techniques to detect and track the movements of the eyes. However, when it comes to remote, non‐intrusive, eye tracking the most commonly used technique is Pupil Centre Corneal Reflection (PCCR). The basic concept is to use a light source to illuminate the eye causing highly visible reflections, and a camera to capture an image of the eye showing these reflections. The image captured by the camera is then used to identify the reflection of the light source on the cornea (glint) and in the pupil. We are then able to calculate a vector formed by the angle between the cornea and pupil reflections – the direction of this vector, combined with other geometrical features of the reflections, will then be used to calculate the gaze direction. The Tobii Eye Trackers are an improved version of the traditional PCCR remote eye tracking technology (US Patent US7,572,008). Near infrared illumination is used to create the reflection patterns on the cornea and pupil of the eye of a user and two image sensors are used to capture images of the eyes and the reflection patterns. Advanced image processing algorithms and a physiological 3D model of the eye are then used to estimate the position of the eye in space and the point of gaze with high accuracy.

Eye during Brigh pupil eye tracking. Above to the left is a Hispanic or Caucasian eye. Above to the right is an Asian eye.

Eye during Dark pupil eye tracking. Above to the left is a Hispanic or Caucasian eye. Above to the right is an Asian eye.

What are Dark and Bright Pupil eye tracking?

There are two different illumination setups that can be used with PCCR eye tracking: bright pupil eye tracking, where an illuminator is placed close to the optical axis of the imaging device, which causes the pupil to appear lit up (this is the same phenomenon that causes red eyes in photos); and dark pupil eye tracking where the illuminator is placed away from the optical axis causing the pupil to appear darker than the iris.

There are different factors that can affect the pupil detection during remote eye tracking when using each one of these two techniques. For example, when using the bright pupil method, factors that affect the size of the pupil, such as age and environmental light, may have an impact on trackability of the eye. Ethnicity is also another factor that affects the bright/dark pupil response: For Hispanics and Caucasians the bright pupil method works very well. However, the method has proven to be less suitable when eye tracking Asians for whom the dark pupil method provides better trackability.

Tobii Eye Trackers of the T/X Series use both bright and dark pupil methods to calculate the gaze position while the earlier 50‐series only used dark pupil eye tracking. Hence, the Tobii T/X Series Eye Trackers are able to deal with larger variations in experimental conditions and ethnicity than an eye tracker using only one of the techniques described above. All participants are initially subjected to both the bright and dark pupil methods and the method that is found to provide the highest accuracy is chosen for the actual testing. During a recording the Tobii TX‐Series Eye Trackers do not change between bright and dark pupil tracking unless conditions change in a way that have a significantly negative impact on trackability. If that happens, the Tobii Eye Trackers conduct a new test where both methods are used simultaneously in order to determine which method is the most suitable for the new conditions and continue the recording using only the selected method.

Wow! that was a long post. Eye tracking is pretty complex! Thanks Tobii!

Read other FAQs about eye tracking on our Objective Digtial website.

In April, Online Banking Review featured our article on Direct Deposit Banking. Please read the full report below.

Once a potential customer has clicked on a banking website, the landing page must keep things clear and captivating.

In a competitive banking environment encouraging customers to sign up for your products can be a challenging task. It is however, an essential one required to build your business. After working so hard to get customers to your site, it’s an injustice to let them slip away. On the surface it might seem that all online forms were created equal. However, the reality is they’re not and you can do plenty to ease the burden that customers often feel in establishing a relationship with you.   

But what factors are most likely to encourage customers to quietly slip away?  We set out to answer this question with a two-pronged attack.

Firstly, we conducted an expert review of the process of searching and applying for an online high interest savings account. Secondly we conducted usability tests (with the assistance of Tobii Eyetracking hardware and software) with 10 individuals. These individuals include six males and four females, ranging in age from 25 to 55 years, who have online banking experience. All participants were city-based professionals. During the test all participants worked through from a product aggregator page (infochoice.com.au) to the account offer landing page then to product sign up. Four online savings accounts were reviewed – UBANK Usaver, INGDIRECT Savings Maximiser, RaboPlus Premium Saver and Bankwest Telenet saver.       

Before we dive into the online form process, lets take a quick look at what happened when participants arrived at the landing page. For the INGDIRECT Savings Maximiser account participants were taken directly to the product page within the main site. While this is advantageous for orientation to the site, the page visually overloaded the participants.  The following heatmap created by Tobii Eye-tracking software illustrate where participants were looking in the first four seconds.

The INGDIRECT Savings Maximiser webpage is incredibly busy and many elements are vying for attention. In the following heatmap for the total time spent on the site, attention is evenly scattered across the whole page. The call to action link – the point of it all somewhat – is hidden in the body of the text requiring more effort and longer time for users to proceed to the next step. Even the main login button in the top right hand corner drew attention away from the intended spot.   

Once a customer has arrived on the landing page, they should be able to decide to apply without being overloaded and there should be a clear call to action. Ubank USaver was successful at achieving this with their landing page. In the following image attention is more focused and facilitated a faster track to begin applying.       

In the image below, attention is more focused and facilitated a faster track to begin applying.

The Bankwest page was also simpler. The following heapmaps show where participants looked in the first four seconds. Their gaze clearly progressed down the page to the relevant information in an orderly fashion.

Having oriented themselves to the page after 10 seconds (as shown in the heatmap below) participants also found the key bullet points valuable. Interestingly the interest rate figure within the body of the page was more popular than the rate in the top banner. Banner blindness is somewhat encouraged as the call to action button is further down the page (in contrast to the position of interest rate and button on the UBank USaver page). 

When planning a landing page, consider what are the key information requirements that are essential to make a decision to apply. Everything else undermines the clarity of that information. Novelty items like projection calculators fall under that category. Here is an indication as to how important it is, see below.

Across our review and usability tests the resounding theme is K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid). It’s a time honoured principle but one that’s more relevant than ever when it comes to usability.

Ease with speed

All participants commented that they preferred sites which they felt they were able complete quickly. The perception of speed rather than absolute time taken is key to satisfaction.  So what effects speed?

LABEL ALIGNMENT ING, Ubank and Bankwest right-justified horizontal labels performed well. There is a clear association between the field and the label, the completion was smooth and manageable.

In terms of labelling best practice, labelling a field top aligned as shown in the next image, will streamline the process even further. The small sacrifice in increased vertical space of the form is well worth it.

SUCCINCT QUESTIONS  Whenever appropriate participants preferred questions that required a yes or no answer. Compare the two instances below for the postal address section. Two extremely different treatments, participants loved the option on the right.

UNNECESSARY QUESTIONS  If your questions don’t have a direct bearing on the form applications, it is best to avoid them. Participants in the following stances were tempted, and some did provide made up answers to get through the process. Clogging up the process with additional request increases the risk of customers dropping out, never to return.

OR ILLOGICAL QUESTIONS  Some questions didn’t always make perfect sense to participants. In the following example, the request to verify an address was initially ignored by most then greet with puzzlement.  If your reason for a question is a legitimate one but not entirely obvious to customers, briefly explain it’s purpose. Frustration will give way to greater appreciation for the information you are seeking.  

Show me the way

PROGESS OR FEELING OF PROGRESS  Participants wanted to keep going non-stop once they started filling out the forms. It was important to feel like the process was not going to be overwhelming. The progress bar helped them see where they were at all times. Naturally the few steps they saw, the more positive they were in attempting the task. In addition, the feeling of achieving a milestone quickly was appreciated. 

SMART FIELDS  Participants loved when fields populated ahead of them. It lightened the workload and made them feel more positive towards the site provider. Participants enjoyed selecting their title and it populated the gender field. In some but not all sites when the BSB number was entered the bank title appeared. Simple features such as this combine to create a positive experience. In and of itself a single field may not seem much but collectively it’s another brick in the wall to climb over. If it can be done, do it.

With the inputting of numeral digits for example phone numbers, participants had a natural tendency to include space in the input field. It was a case in point that common and natural behaviours were not taken into account when the form was designed.

Technology should be utilised to accommodate human data entry rather than show an error message.

Tell me how it is!

GOOD COMMUNCATION During the application process the customer is doing most of the ‘talking’. Minor information is feedback to the customer as to how they are going and more often than not in the process you’ll only ‘hear’ from the bank when you’re made an error.  One participant spoke about the desire to have each field ticked once it is filled correctly. The constant level of positive reinforcement would mean they’d not worry about going over old ground and would always be moving forward.

Inline validation is the next best thing and many participants loved it. Instant error message was unanimously agreed as the ideal style of messaging. Attending to the issue then and there meant the process was streamlined. UBank stood out in this regard.

HELP IS HERE BUT HIDDEN  Customers crave the ability to contact bank even though they might not need it. We have already mentioned the need for a Contact Us function and help is regarded in the same way.  Ready, easy access to help (as close to the relevant field as possible) is has major appeal.  It is also best practice.

WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO NEXT? At the completion of a form step, participants were given a range of options to choose from.  A lack of consistency across the banking sites means customers cannot benefit from conventions.  Each time the participants arrived at the action buttons – submit, continue etc - they were required to think about the step, rather than it be an automatic reaction.

It is useful to know that the visual presentation of actions should match their importance. Reset, Cancel, Go Back [secondary action] are not as important as Save, Continue, Submit [primary action].  Therefore there should be a clear visual difference between the options presented. It is also important to align the primary action with the input field for a clear path to completion. The extra clarity of this action will avoid mistakes and speed up the application process.

This brief review of some of the elements of form application serves to highlight where customers can become snagged on certain parts of the process. It goes without saying that your goal is to get customers from start to finish, but to allow them to do so in the shortest amount of time requires some thought and consideration. Your information needs may not always be transparent to the customer, for very valid reasons, however their needs require your attention to. Balancing both sets of needs will result a win-win.