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What Eye Tracking Could Do For You

What Eye Tracking Could Do For You In a recent article we discussed further what eye tracking is good for. With a lot of naysayers still voicing legitimate concerns, it’s important to note eye tracking’s value, even if it comes at a high price. There are a number of companies working on more affordable (dare we say – cheap) products, but unless you’re looking to do it yourself, chances are you’re paying a pretty penny for an eye tracker or to a consulting firm with expert knowledge.

It’s important to note that, while eye tracking can certainly provide insight, it can’t do it alone. In fact, knowing what to do with the data and how to interpret it is the hardest part, and many are overwhelmed at the amount of data an eye tracker can provide. Just because something is looked at frequently on a heat map doesn’t mean a website or product is working in the ways you want it to.

Knowing where participants in a usability study look is important, but you need supplementary observations to gain insight into why they’re looking where they do. Eye tracking provides a better opportunity to answer questions such as which elements are distracting in negative ways and which content participants read (including articles, instructions, contextual help, and error messages). It can help determine how participants read, in detail or by scanning, and provide insight into whether a particular design is more effective than another in terms of user or business goals.

Eye tracking can help identify behaviors that participants may not be able to describe during a decompression session. If you ask them whether or not they noticed a particular element or if and why they had a problem with it, participants often have difficulty answering accurately, without changing their answer and altering it for the study. Many of the eye movements we make are unconscious, so it’s quite a challenge to report what we looked at and for how long. If you looked at a certain spot first and another second, it’s also difficult to remember if you’re not really paying attention. Then if you’re paying too close attention, perhaps you’re not using the site as comfortably as you might on your own (or as comfortably as the researchers would like) and this can also alter results. If a participant speaks aloud during a task, we can gain insight into their processes and behavior but, again, it makes for potential alteration of the subject’s natural tendency – what they’re doing without any conscious filtering.

Check back for more insights into how eye tracking can help, and in the meantime, check out the article below:

Eyetracking: Is It Worth It?

What Eye Tracking Could Do For You

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