2003 we purchased the first Tobii eye tracker ever sold to a commercial organisation. We were delighted and wanted to see how far the technology could be pushed so we tried it with Tom who was just two years old at the time:
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Dear Mr. Neil Campbell, President, Tropicana North America
RE: The Truth About Tropicana
We all make mistakes, so no one can blame you for saying that the Tropicana repackaging re-call was a concession to noisy bloggers and social media outcry amongst passionate Tropicana fans. It’s a credible story and one where you appear to have bowed to consumer pressure – something that allows you to use the situation to your advantage – you, Tropicana, have consumers so attached to your old-packaging that you had no choice but to revert back to it, to keep them happy!
However, the truth is much simpler. With the new packaging design Tropicana suffered a $33 million sales drop and without considering properly why this might be the case you risk confusing yourself about the real cause for Tropicana’s sales loss.
You see, while you undoubtedly blame the sales loss on the repackaging, you probably blame it on the wrong elements of the repackaging. And that could prove a fatal mistake. Continue reading
Two of the things that I love about eye tracking are:
The eye tracking on this piece of research was done using a head mounted eye tracker by Locarna. This type of eyetracker is particularly useful for shopper research or as we will see, other real World situations such as user testing games that have novel or complex interfaces and peripherals.
One of the most successful areas for growth in the last decade has been the games industry; it grossed $11.7 billion in the US alone in 2008 which, surprisingly for some, is more than the film industry. Continue reading
I had an interesting interview with Beverly Freeman of eBay on Friday, following on from my comments in “Eye Tracking Methodology” the white paper by Kara Prenice and Jacob Nielsen of Nielsen Norman Group.
Beverly was interested to find out why I advocate NOT SHOWING users their eye gaze data in the retrospective interview, when the latest release of Tobii Studio (2.0) has significant functionality to support moderators showing users exactly this.
In 2002, we were the first commercial organisation to purchase a Tobii eye tracker (a Tobii ET17). During our early experimental days I was inspired by watching a gaze replay video of Tom Dodd (son of Dr Jon Dodd, my co-founder) when he was two years old.
During seconds 26 to 31 of the video, Tom makes a decision about which Teletubbie he would like to play with. You can hear him subvocalising his decision with an “errrrr” sound as he looks from the yellow one, to the group, to the red one and back to the yellow one. As Tom was only two year old at the time he could not articulate his decision making process, but, that didn’t matter as I had access to his eye movements and could infer what the decision making process was likely to have been.
I was inspired with the potential insights I could gain and the technology that made it possible. As a result I went on to develop a retrospective methodology based on showing users their own gaze replay videos and/or gaze paths and asking them about what they had done and what their motivation was. In 2005 we ran an experiment with Lancaster University to test the methodology to see if it worked better than concurrent think aloud, and it did.
Since 2005 the retrospective methodology has been further developed to overcome a specific problem; users are often enamoured by the eye tracking technology and the results it produces. This takes the focus away from the user’s experience of the website and focuses it on the eye tracking technology.
One approach that we tried with some success was to show the user a gaze replay video at the start of the session, even before they had been calibrated. The moderator would explain how the eye tracker works, what the results would look like and how the user’s eye tracked data would be employed to discuss what they did and why. Pre-emptively showing the user what they would see removed some of the novelty, but it was an approach that only partially treated a symptom, it was not a cure. A bigger change was needed and I’m pleased to say that my Bunnyfoot co-founder Dr Jon Dodd had the insight to deliver just that.
Jon has been using eye tracking since he started his doctorate at Oxford in 1995 and any reverence to the technology he may have had, is long gone. I think this lack of reverence helped Jon to realise that we should stop showing users their gaze replay data in any form and instead use the intelligence and experience of the moderator to watch and diagnose the information they are receiving from the live viewer.
We call this methodology Post Experience Eye Tracked Protocol or PEEP. The protocol requires the moderator to take notes and then use these notes to guide the retrospective interview, without showing the user their own eye tracking data. The protocol requires highly skilled practitioners, capable of multitasking and thinking on their feet. Being a great usability practitioner is a highly skilled job!
It took me many years to get to this point, but as a result of this experience I’d like to offer a word of caution to usability practitioners starting out with eye tracking; just because the tools exist within Tobii Studio to allow you to share user’s eye tracking data with them, does not mean that you should!
To be a great usability practitioner, you need to realise that eye tracking is just a tool. A valuable one, but one that deserves no more reverence that Microsoft Office. That is why I’m not in love with eye tracking.
Thanks for reading: http://twitter.com/modestrobert
As Christmas is almost here I thought is a good time to revist a blog from last year looking at credit rating agencies Equifax and Experian. Last year we found that 97% of people could not find their Statutory Credit Report using Equifax. A report that you are legally entitled to for just £2.00.
In the intervening time Equifax has made it even harder to find your report: There were two links on Equifax’s home page to your Statutory Credit Report, now there is just one and it is effectively hidden at the bottom of the page with grey text on a grey background!
The rest of this blog was originally posted on 9th September 2008.
As the credit crunch worsens and identity theft increases, consumers are well advised to check their credit rating on a regular basis.
Credit Ratings are now more important than ever before, so at Think Eye Tracking we conducted independent research on two major credit reference agency websites; Equifax and Experian.
In the UK, people have a legal right to get a copy of their Credit Rating for £2 ($4US). Equifax and Experian allow people to apply for their Statutory Credit Ratings online. Both websites also offer a number of premium services related to credit ratings which range in price.
The research included eyetracking thirty people as they tried to get their Statutory Credit Rating reports.
With Equifax, of the thirty people tested, only one person saw and clicked on the statutory report. The premium services however were very engaged with. This suggests Equifax maybe pushing the premium services at the expense of the statutory one.
Some of the people tested verbalized their confusion and unhappiness:
“They are trying to force me to buy my credit rating for £12 when I have a legal right to for £2, it’s disgusting.”
“I just can’t find it. Am I being stupid?…. Is it really here?”
“I must have looked for it for four or five minutes without finding it before I gave up.”
Finding the statutory report proved difficult for 29 of the 30 consumers tested as the heatmap below shows, there is only one mouse click on the Statutory Credit Report link:
The testing returned far more positive results from the Experian site. 18 of the 30 people tested clicked the statutory report, but 27 saw it. Consumers who did not choose the statutory report made an informed decision to go for Experian’s one month free trial of their premium service.
The eye tracking heatmap above details where people tested focused on the Experian home page. Eighteen of the thirty testedclicked to access their statutory report and 27 saw it. Some of the people tested stated:
“I looked at the statutory offer but went with the free one because it seemed better.”
“Why isn’t the Exquifax one easy like that?”
Companies do need to balance their commercial interests with their moral and legal obligations. This is necessary to gain the trust and loyalty of consumers. At Think we believe Experian has got the balance right by prioritizing their premium service while also giving consumers statutory rights a significant amount of prominent screen estate alongside a compelling commercial offering.
Is Equifax profiteering from the recession?
