Ask the Eyetrackers: Students Want to Learn More

Q: We are doing a research project for school on Eyetrack. We have several questions. Who most benefits from Eyetrack? Where is eyetracking going and who wants it? How is eyetracking going to be used? What history can you tell us about it? Who started it? What was the goal of creating this technology? Are there any negative aspects of Eyetrack?

Sarah Bump

A: Sarah, thanks for writing and for your class' interest in the Eyetrack III research.

Who benefits from eyetracking? The findings and observations from the study will be most useful to website designers, since what we reported will help them better design the pages of their sites. By understanding how people view webpages, designers can make the best decisions about how to lay out pages, how to use photos, what size to make type, and so on.

Many other people involved with websites can benefit from these findings: editors, publishers, advertisers, photographers ... just about anyone involved with publishing websites. The Eyetrack III research in particular was aimed at helping publishers of news websites, but other web publishers not in the news business probably will find useful information in this study.

Where is eyetracking going? Eyetracking has been around for many years, but only in the last year were we able to test people without them having to wear funny-looking camera headgear with a bunch of wires. Now, a test subject just sits in front of a computer screen and a tiny camera at the bottom of the screen tracks his or her eye movements. This technological advancement makes eyetracking much more useful, because the testing is much more like real life.

Who wants eyetracking? Eyetracking is very useful for figuring out how people view anything on a computer screen. While we tested news websites, eyetracking can be used for research on anything that's on a PC -- games, computer applications, blogs, video, instant messaging, etc.

Eyetracking is used for many other things away from the computer screen, too. Researchers have tracked people's eyes while they're driving a car, for example, or while they're pushing a cart down a grocery-store aisle. The military uses eyetracking to understand how pilots view instruments in a jet's cockpit. There are so many uses for eyetracking, I could list pages of examples -- but I'll stop here.

How is Eyetrack III going to be used? People involved with publishing news websites will look at our research results and think about what we found, and see if maybe they should change how their sites look or do things. They won't rely solely on Eyetrack III; they'll combine what we reported with other types of research that they've done on their own, then make decisions on what -- if anything -- they might change.

What's the history of Eyetrack? Who started it? The Poynter Institute, publisher of Eyetrack III, has been involved in eyetracking media since 1990. We've conducted three studies. The first one, in 1990, looked at how people viewed printed newspapers. The second one, in 1999-2000, studied early news websites. The third one again looked at news websites, and at multimedia news features (ones with slide shows, video, audio, etc.). You can read more about Eyetrack's history here.

The history of eyetracking goes back much further than 1990. People have been studying eye movements for at least a hundred years. The first somewhat effective eyetracking technology was devised in the 1960s. Many of the older methods involved having test subjects wear headgear containing cameras and mirrors. Technology for eyetracking is getting better all the time. No more headgear.

What was the goal of creating this technology? The goal of conducting the Eyetrack III study was to take advantage of the recent advances in technology to better understand how people use news websites. By literally looking through people's eyes, we can learn things that even they couldn't tell us -- because eye movements are very fast, and often unconscious. What we learn helps designers build websites that are easy to read, and where people can find things easily and better understand what's being presented to them.

Are there any negative aspects of eyetracking? Not many that I can think of! The technology is not perfect yet. The eyetracker we used had trouble getting accurate readings on some test subjects -- especially older people and some ethnic groups. Newer eyetrackers similar to the one we used for Eyetrack III have solved some of those problems. We report results for 46 test subjects; we started with 51 people but had to drop some from the testing because the eyetracker couldn't get accurate readings from their eyes.

Steve Outing, Eyetrack III co-project manager, Poynter senior editor

(Note: Questions may have been edited for length or grammar.)

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