who spent all their time feeding them their specially prepared fuel pellets, writing their own analysis software, and trying to read the resulting runes.
Then came the millennium and a quantum leap forward by the manufacturers. All of a sudden, instead of requiring programming skills, bailing wire, and a soldering iron, eye trackers worked right out of the box. And they came with software that let almost anyone—anyone with $30,000— generate impressive output, especially (God help us!) heatmaps.
Over the years, I’ve sat through countless demos and presentations, and tried to read everything that was written about eye tracking and UX. At one point, one of the manufacturers was even nice enough to give me a loaner for a few months, so I had the chance to do a little experimenting myself. The upshot is that I’ve always known a lot about eye tracking for someone who doesn’t actually do eye tracking.
And here’s what I know:
Eye tracking is sexy. Harry Brignull once did a presentation that drew an analogy between eye trackers and the shoe-fitting fluoroscopes that were used in shoe stores from the 1920s to the 1960s.2 Your child would put his or her feet in an opening at the bottom of the machine, and you could peer in and see the bones inside, giving you the comforting knowledge that the shoes weren’t going to warp your child’s tender feet. It was fascinating, it was science (not opinion), and it offered the promise of proof. And it had lots of sizzle.3 Heatmaps have the same kind of sizzle.
It sells. Even though we can all agree in retrospect that the shoe-fitting fluoroscope was probably not a good idea, it sold shoes. And blinding people with science still works: eye trackers sell UX services. You can probably charge more if your deliverables include some heatmaps, whether they show anything that’s useful or not.
It seems easy. But it’s not. It’s no trick nowadays to do some eye tracking and create compelling graphics that make it seem like you’re proving something. But actually knowing what you’re doing takes time, experience, and learning.
It’s hard to learn how to do it well. There have been tons of academic papers and manufacturers’ white papers, but no one has produced a how-to book for practitioners.
Enter Aga.
Actually, I’d like to take a tiny bit of credit for this part. I’d heard Aga speak several times over the years, so I knew that she always had the smartest things to say about eye tracking and UX. Then I read an article she wrote for the UX magazine and discovered that she was a really, really good writer. So I told Lou Rosenfeld he needed to get her to do a how-to book. Now that it’s here, I feel a little like a proud uncle. Or maybe a matchmaker.
Believe me, you’re in good hands. Aga really knows her stuff, and she’ll tell you just what you need to know. This is, as she’s described it, “The book I wish I’d had when I was starting out doing eye tracking.” What more can you ask for?
BTW, if I were an eye tracking manufacturer, I’d buy a few hundred copies and give them away to all my customers and potential customers. And then I’d loan Steve Krug another eye tracker.
—Steve Krug
Author of Don’t Make Me Think
PART I
Why Eye Tracking?
CHAPTER 1
Eye Tracking: What’s All the Hoopla?
Why Should You Care Where People Look?
Why Do People Look at What They Look At?
Eye tracking, which is the process of identifying where someone is looking and how, has generated a great amount of interest in the user experience (UX) field since the beginning of the twenty-first century when the technology started becoming more widely accessible. Once a novel addition to the UX research toolbox, used by only a handful of early adopters, eye tracking is now frequently employed to help evaluate and improve designs (from websites to product packaging) at various stages of the development cycle.
Because it captures behaviors that are not easily controllable (by study participants) or observable (by researchers), eye tracking has been perceived as both more scientific and more “magical” than conventional usability testing methods. Initially, this perception resulted in eye tracking frequently being used for its own sake, regardless of study objectives. The common belief was that any study would produce better insight if accompanied by eye tracking.
When I started applying eye tracking to UX research in 2003, the typical approach in the field seemed to be “ready, fire, aim” or “track now, think later,” as we used to fondly call it. Practitioners would often turn on their newly acquired eye trackers and collect eye movement data with no consideration for the study design or the outcome. They would then embark on a fishing expedition, looking for data that might address their questions, failing to realize that they should have structured their study differently to obtain meaningful results.
While the mentality of eye tracking as the “be-all end-all” and the “tracknow-think-later” approach still exist to some extent, more and more practitioners realize that in order to learn something useful from eye tracking, more emphasis must be placed on science and less on magic. They recognize the importance of being aware of both the capabilities and limitations of eye tracking, knowing how to properly incorporate it into UX research, and learning how to interpret and communicate eye tracking findings. This book covers all these topics, but before we start diving into deep waters, let’s first examine the concept behind eye tracking.
A Quick Look Back
Eye tracking as a technique originated in reading research. Researchers in the late 1800s realized that people’s eyes didn’t move as smoothly through text as it had always been assumed. This (unaided) observation prompted researchers to develop technology to measure eye movements in an effort to better understand how people read.
The
