User experience: The application value and problems of eye movement research

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With the rise of user experience and the progress of technology equipment, eye movement research has become more and more well-known, domestic more research advisory bodies or enterprises themselves began to equip with eye movement instrument. But for eye movement technology and research methods, many friends are still a chimera in the water, hope to further understand the role of eye movement research, learning to analyze the use of methods. One of the most important concerns is what is the special role of eye movement research? The aim of this paper is to make a superficial introduction to the study of ocular motion and to answer what is the problem with why.

A lot of people are also concerned about how to do the problem, to the interested friends recommend a valuable new version of the book with eye tracking to enhance the usability of the site and the supplementary report (see Extended reading), this is not discussed here.

What's the eye movement?

A detailed introduction to the working principles of eye physiology and eye movement tracking can be found in other books, which are not covered in detail. In fact, you only need to master some of the most basic knowledge, which helps you to better understand the concept of eye movement.

First, we say that eye movement (eye movements) actually includes two basic movements, namely, gaze (fixation) and eye jump (saccade). When people look at the world, the sense of sight is continuous, but from the eye movement record can be seen clearly, in fact, the eye activity is a jump-type, some time is a short pause, called "gaze", some time is a rapid movement, called "Eye jump." In the eye movement result graph is expressed by the circle and the line segment, thus may see the eye movement which sees also can see the eye to jump is called the gaze plot.

Generally in usability testing and advertising eye movement experiments, researchers only care about the gaze point. This is because the human eye can "see" things only when they gaze, and a certain degree of blindness occurs when the eye jumps. We don't feel it because the eye jumps very fast, usually only 1% seconds to one-tenth seconds.

Second, the gaze point refers to the most visible visual area of the current human eye (central concave vision). People tend to think they clearly see the whole environment, but in fact the eye can see a limited range every moment. You can try to keep your eyes stationary and try to read text outside of the gaze, and you'll find it very difficult. The human eye can be clearly watched in a range of about one to two words, which is usually the area that can focus on processing.

For a picture, a person can see it even if it is not in the range of gaze. The same experiment shows that the picture is in a range of distance from the gaze (depending on the size of the picture), we can still tell the approximate content of the picture (whether the characters are photographed, etc.). Therefore, the absence of a gaze point does not necessarily mean invisible.

The value of eye movement research

Watching video of the eye-tracking camera in real time is always a cool feeling. Indeed, this kind of God-like perspective provides researchers with valuable information that is difficult to find in usability testing, questionnaires, background data mining, and other research methods. In simple terms, the information provided by eye tracking is how people "look" at something, so what is the value of it and what insights and revelations can be provided?

Learn about user browsing behavior and habits. When a user opens a Web page and sees an ad, what does it look like? What's the first thing that gets the user's attention? This information is important because most of the time the user's attention is different from what the design wants the user to see, and the difference is displayed by eye movement data. For example, a web designer makes an important button stand out so that the user can see it, and the user will turn a blind eye to the big button, with the eyes full on the screen, because TA will use the overly prominent button as an advertisement. For example, some of the common problems of advertising design is that people do not pay attention to the name of the product or business, but the sight of the beautiful model.

Help researchers analyze and clarify problems. In usability testing, researchers are most puzzled when encountering users who neither act nor speak. At this point the user is likely to be hampered by the task, and the researcher needs to decide when to remind the user to continue thinking aloud (think aloud). And through real-time eye-movement observations, researchers can indirectly understand the user's situation-what is the user looking for, or what is confusing the user (looking back and forth), or is the user ignoring the relevant important elements? The researchers can also carry out eye movement research to verify or reject it with a hypothesis. Discover the real cause of the problem.

Eye movement Chart is a good display tool for high quality research results. When you first learned about contact eye movement, it is believed that you have seen the following eye movement. This is the most commonly used hotspot map (heat map) to present the results of eye movement research. As the name suggests, the hotspot map presents the "hot spots" of the people's eyes, the more red the area representatives are focused more. Usually such a result chart is very attractive, because looks at a glance, is "a picture wins thousand words" good representative. The researchers like to show such persuasive graphs, and viewers like to see simple and intuitive results. Therefore, as a visual means, eye movement plays a good role in information communication.

How reliable is eye movement research?

Long before eye movement research was widely introduced into commercial applications, it has been in the psychology industry for decades and remains an important research tool. But the debate over eye-movement research has not stopped, citing some of the controversial focus.

What do you think? A small experiment described above can show that people's attention can be separated from the gaze. We also know that sometimes the eyes are in sight while the brain is actually wandering. So, just knowing what people are looking at doesn't mean knowing what TA is thinking. In this respect, psychologists have proposed the brain-eye consistency hypothesis, which refers to what people think is usually one thing. Especially when people focus on a particular task, this hypothesis is usually established. With this premise, we are able to accept the reliability of eye movement research.

The longer the gaze, the better? If the user's line of sight for a long time to stay, whether this is good or bad? There are two possibilities, one in which the user sees something of interest and focuses on it, and another may be that the user is confused about something and has to spend time understanding it. In terms of eye-movement data alone, it is difficult for researchers to tell which is the case. Therefore, one of the important principles in the use of eye movement research is not to rely solely on eye movement data. To understand what the user wants, you must do so through inquiries or other means. Researchers need to combine a variety of research methods to interpret eye movement data.

The eye movement result is very objective? Hot spots look cool, and they're like a guaranteed fact. However, eye movement is the most attractive and easy way to trick people. The first reason is that when the number of users is small, the results of the eye movement may vary greatly. Nielsen recommends that a stable hotspot map require at least 30 valid test data *. Second, the user's browsing style varies depending on the task. When users are asked to perform different tasks, the focus of attention varies widely. If unreasonable tasks are used, the results are easily misleading. Third, the results of a single test do not show common problems. To obtain a universally meaningful result, there is a need for more than one type of Web site to be reliable. It is therefore prudent to use the eye-movement test results of other sites. Next time you see a hot map, calm down and think about three important questions: User, task, test content universality.

Do you want to do eye work?

The eye movement is known by more and more people, without the encouragement of the producers. Indeed, the current eye movement has made the data collection process very simple. In particular, the use of a monitor or notebook embedded eye movement, to carry out eye movement test almost with the ordinary user testing no different. Eye-tracking devices do not interfere with the user, and the researchers only need to start doing simple calibration and remember to press the button to record the data. When considering whether to carry out eye movement research, we should consider the problem from these angles.

Problem-oriented. Whether the need for eye movement research, first need to pay attention to what kind of problem to solve. Eye movement is only a technical means, ultimately, to answer the study of the question, come to a valuable conclusion. So before you ask "Do you want to do a research", answer "what to study". Usability testing is generally enough to solve many design problems.

Input/return ratio. Although the cost of eye-moving devices is falling, it is still a big expense to buy research equipment, so deciding whether or not to buy should give full consideration to whether or not the investment can be rewarded accordingly. If the budget is limited or easy to spare, leasing equipment or outsourced services would be a better option (in fact, the cost is not low).

Quality of research staff. The researchers ' work is mainly on the eye-movement data analysis, which is seemingly simple but difficult work, the professional level of the researchers required higher. So it is important to have a reliable research staff to do a reliable eye movement study. Of course, you can ask a third party consulting service company to solve this problem.

With the ease and refinement of eye tracking devices, today's eye movement technology is used more widely, and one application is to control the computer as an input device. It can be foreseen that in the near future the eye movement technology will be more mature, and its popularization speed as the research means will continue to accelerate. But the basic problem of eye movement research will still exist, so we need to have a clear understanding.

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