Apple Of My Eye, Tracking?

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There is much interest in rumors that Apple has licensed a Tobii Technology eyetracking platform to be used in a tablet, confidentiality agreements mean that I can’t comment on that. But I do know Apple users will not be getting eye tracking as an input device anytime soon, if indeed ever, because of one inalienable fact; Eye Tracking is not as good as multi touch:

Eye tracking is no more accurate than your finger

Your eye is constantly moving, tiny movements, that you don’t even notice, just in the same way that when you run, the World looks stable, you don’t notice that you are moving up and down as well as forward. But when Kate Adie’s standard issue BBC camera man runs away from a ‘contact’ in Basra the picture bounces around so as to be largely indecipherable. Your brain smoothes out the movement, cameras don’t have brains so they can’t. Continue reading

The Great Eye Tracking Debate

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Do You Absolutely Positively Need Eye Tracking For Web Usability Studies?

In May 2009 Kara Pernice and I debated this question at the UK’s Usability Professionals Association. Kara argued that you do not absolutely positively need eye tracking for web usability studies and I argued that you do.

Truth is, you don’t absolutely positively need eyetracking for web usability studies, but it would not have been much of a debate if we had both taken the middle ground!

I find it frustrating that there is still much misunderstanding about eye tracking in the usability profession. Eyetracking is not a paradigm shift, it does not fundamentally change the way you run a user test. It allows a moderator to move away from relying on the concurrent talk aloud protocol to an informed retrospective protocol. We call this protocol Post Experience Eyetracked Protocol or PEEP and we have developed, refined and tested it internally and with academic partners over many years. Continue reading