The Accuracy of Eye Tracking: A Web Usability Debate

After searching for online content, anyone curious about eye tracking has probably realized that there is plenty debate on the advantages and disadvantages of the technology (to be fair, most of the controversy we see centers around usability testing and accuracy, not eye tracking as a medical or communicative solution).

Some posts claim that it’s the Holy Grail that will lead to perfect insight into the way people use and interact with websites. But as with any sort of usability testing, there is no one way to observe and understand people’s behavior. There are physical movements, sure, but to know what people are thinking and discover the how and why they make their navigational decisions online – this is more nuanced.

The advantages of eye tracking when it comes to usability are that it is relatively unobtrusive and is able to track a user’s natural, unconscious movements. This, of course, is revolutionary in the industry. But, as a recent and insightful post puts it, usability and the observation of human behaviors should be a conglomeration of approaches and observations, employing various technologies simultaneously to follow user decision making.

In other words, there is no silver bullet.

It is true that there are an awful lot of pretty graphs to look at with the advent of eye tracking. Heat maps in particular look good and were quite useful for comparing and improving simple layouts and text/advertising placement on a web page. But, as James Breeze of UX Magazine writes, “the invention of rich, interactive, and transactional interfaces, however, has meant producing eye tracking results that are more complex.”

He goes on to say that different interfaces have different states and that people can interact whichever way they want, choosing their own way through a task to completion. Eye trackers cannot tell which state is what as a person’s eyes are tracked, and additional analysis is required to separate those interactions.

While eye tracking technology has indeed advanced to accommodate these complexities, Breeze fears that unless new levels of sophistication are made part of everyday eye tracking progression, eye tracking data could end up being misused and will retain “its novelty status.”

He has a good point here. Eye tracking looks good as a sales pitch, but as far as real results and statistics go, eye tracking doesn’t provide the whole picture. In the meantime, the combination of eye tracking and, say, verbal usability testing is a good approach.

When users are asked to speak their thoughts and decisions aloud as they navigate through an interface by a facilitator who “skillfully interrupts” the process to learn why study participants are making the decisions they make, researchers can get a more complete assessment of the user experience and decision making process. But, he goes on to say that for onscreen interactions, a considerable cognitive effort is required. This is often distracting and might affect more objective analysis of the interface. But if eye tracking is used supplementary to “Think Aloud” approaches, studies can be scaled back and tailored more appropriately in an effort to provide more accurate results.

Eye Tracking: Best Way to Test Rich App Usability

No related articles.