This is subset of the slides presented at the 2011 SXSW conference that highlights the pros and cons of eye tracking for user research. Key Lime Interactive moderated and participated as a panelist for this session.

1. Believe Me or Your Own Eyes Eye Tracking Entertainment Key Lime Interactive Presents: @Zolna @Aniaster Barnes and Noble THQ Key Lime Interactive Key Lime Interactive @jknodler

2. #KLITracksEyes

3. Today’s Prizes 8 X-Ray Gogs 1 Key Lime Pie Delivered to Your Home While Supplies Last

4. Question ? Tell us how you've used eye tracking and what some of the pros and cons are based on your experience.

5. Ability for people to actually “see” how the user uses the page. Eye Tracking Pro Example using a Focus Map Example using a Scan Path

6. Heat maps with different number of participants N=1 N=5 N=10 N=16 N=20 N=25 N=30 N=36 Task: Find Article

7. Must always preface what you asked the participants to do when presenting eye tracking data. Context is important

8. Eye Tracking Pro Ability to pick an object (e.g. skull) and gather data to tell you how long users dwelled on a certain object and it’s hit rate.

9. Eye Tracking Con “ Mapping ET data to a 3D world requires time-consuming manual analysis. e.g. area of interest must stay on top of helicopter (green circle as its visible during gameplay) Measure Meaning Take away # fixations in a given area of interest Number of times a participant gazes at a given area of interest How easy it is a find a given element Dwell Time % Amount of time spent fixating in a given area of interest Information clarity / processing demands / information density Hit Ratio Percent of users fixating on an area Prominence, Noticeability

10. Eye Tracking Pro You can get really nice quantitative measures that create much better statistics than Pass/Fail. Measures: Pupil dilation as a measure of cognitive load Blinks, saccades, pupil dilation and time.

11. Question ? Tell us about the methods (e.g. think aloud, retrospective think aloud vs. debriefing) you’ve used.

12. 3 Methods Think Aloud (TAP) Retrospective Think Aloud (RTA) Debriefing 1 2 3

13. The Debate

14. Question ? Some argue that adding eye tracking is just not worth it. Do you agree?

15. Question ? How has eye tracking evolved?

17. Always collect other data. It might be an interview after, it might be separate site analytics or a survey, but as with any research, you want to triangulate. Plan and remember that eye-tracking is not fool proof. Hire a firm that knows what they are doing. if you are using new or complicated delivery platforms (like 3D virtual worlds) be sure to run a pilot study prior to any large-scale tests to expose some on the inevitable complications. Words of Wisdom