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Eye Tracking Usability and User Experience, but Fun Overall

Posted on Feb 12, 2010 | 0 comments

Eye Tracking Usability and User Experience, but Fun Overall With the rapid growth of computer tech, new gadgets in so many hands, and with a vast population online or at least aware of the Internet, there comes a comparable emergence of new terminology. A once quite specific language is entering into everyday vernacular. A post on the blog at Insideria.com discusses two terms brought to light in the past few years, “usability” and “user experience,” which may sound similar in nature, however, are anything but synonymous.

Usability, as the post points out, is a term that refers to the ease with which a user can accomplish his or her goals using any tool. Usability is a word associated with software, web design, and general computer interaction, with implications in psychology and behavioral study. How do people use things? Can they use it with ease? Do they understand it? Is the technology intuitive? Usability is “fundamentally qualitative but involves the heavy application of quantitative data to identify areas of weakness and suggest improvements.” Usability studies generally involve groups of people, volunteers, or subjects reacting to software or hardware interfaces with their efforts followed and documented by a researcher or group of researchers. Often these studies employ eye tracking technology to monitor where people look as they navigate a site. “Highly usable interfaces” are perceived as being intuitive and easy to understand and operate.

But “user experience” refers to “the way a user perceives his or her interaction with the system.” This includes both the technological design and the user’s general feeling and emotional interaction with the interface. User experience typically focuses on the psychological impact of interacting with the system, rather than an interpretation based solely on pure usability.

Essentially, usability is something that can be measured and documented, observing, for instance, how a subject interacts with the interface, where they go, where they look, what they click on. But user experience is really something that needs to be described verbally by the user (though biometric data comes into play here to some extent, identifying physiological changes that might imply emotion).

It’s important to note that while there are certainly differences between the pair of terms, they are not necessarily exclusive. There can be crossover. The post goes on to talk about the importance of the two and what can be learned. Generally, you’d expect designers to hope their product has a high level of usability and a positive user experience. But one of the more interesting points is the idea of a product with a low level of usability yet still a pleasing user experience.

Of course, not everyone shares this opinion, but the post’s author considers the iPhone to be difficult to understand and intuit. Granted, not everyone is computer savvy quite yet, and if while you may think the device is a breeze, perhaps your grandmother doesn’t. But the point here, above all, is that the iPhone is fun. And maybe that’s really what it comes down to – not efficiency, not design, not the ease with which you can understand and operate an interface. It could be none of these, but if it’s still enjoyable, that is a success. As it’s put in the article when comparing the iPhone to the Blackberry: “failing on the iPhone is more enjoyable than succeeding on a Blackberry.” The eye tracking industry could learn a thing or two about this. A funny concept, but assuming we learn by making mistakes, perhaps that should be the goal all along.

The Differences between Usability and User Experience

Eye Tracking Usability and User Experience, but Fun Overall

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