Learn about user experience and usability!
Objective Digital offers user experience consulting, usability testing, user centred design and eye tracking. We improve the way websites, intranets and business application user interfaces are designed and create a better experience for the user.
On this blog Anna, Liz, Jon, Joanna, Nirish and James help you better understand the practice of usability testing, user experience consulting and user centred design.
Follow us on Twitter @objectivedig
We sell eye tracker hardware and software at Objective Technology. Rent an eye tracker for usability testing in Sydney.
Visit us!
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
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
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
Comments [0]
We have had a few people ask us to expand on how to use the new LINK function for importing Tobii Studio projects, which first appeared in Studio 1.5 and is onboard still in 2.0.
One of the biggest frustrations with Studio users is the amount of time it can take to export a large test, the issues you can have with ensuring your hard drive is formatted to accept files of that size and also the amount off HDD space they can take up. In addition to this if you have an error on your hard disk you risk the NAS file being corrupted and losing all your work (or your backup).
With Studio 1.5 Tobii altered they way the files are saved and located on the drive and you can now see in the PROJECT menu, the location of the project on your hard drive – and you can also specify this to suit your personal requirements. This is usually something like C:Document/Tobii Studio Projects by default.
So how does the new system help you? Firstly you can copy the files easily by dragging and dropping to a back up drive, USB stick or similar. As the files are copied individually there is no problems with hitting the thresholds of FAT32 formatting meaning no need to worry about reformatting drives to suit. Thirdly, if you have an error on your drive you may only lose one or two files – and therefore not all your test which is a bonus! And as you can copy and paste, or drag the files across you don’t have to sit through a long export procedure!
So how do you quickly export / import projects…
Exporting : If you want to move a project from one machine to another to back it up, simply locate the folder (use the PROJECT menu to see the root directory) then copy and paste or drag and drop the files to your USB drive, external hard drive, network storage or similar.
Importing : When you have copied the files across to the machine you want to import the data to, make a note of where you have stored the files and open Studio. On the PROJECT menu you need to click on the LINK PROJECT icon and then use the BROWSE function to find your folder. Click on the folder to open it and you will see a database file (in DB3 format). Select this file and Studio should link the project for you. Much quicker than the old export / import function!
Limitations : Ok, there had to be a down side – but its a small one! If you are collecting data from maybe two different sources / trackers, or you are adding extra recording to an existing project you can only use the quick function for the first set of data. For the second set you will need to export and import as normal so that Studio will merge the projects together.
Hope you find that useful – I know it has saved us a huge amount of time and means that managing backups and archive data is much simpler.
As always – any questions or comments feel free to contact us via sales@acuity-ets.com
A great post from Acuity in the UK on how to export Tobii Studio eye tracking projects
Comments [0]
Comments [0]