November 2011 has been an interesting month for eye tracking user interfaces: Tobii announced the release of EyeAsteroid, the world’s first eye-controlled arcade game.
Eye Asteroids is a good PR vehicle Joakim Isaks of Tobii writes;
“EyeAsteroids is more of a novelty and designed to create a ‘wow, this actually works’ reaction when you try it for the first time.” Continue reading
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:
Continue reading
I’m off to the Games Development Conference in San Francisco next month and it reminded me to do some blogs about what we have been up to since we started eye tracking games in 2007. Back then, we were using eyetracking and psycho-physiological measurements to investigate the subconscious processes that gamers experience as they play. The results are impressive:
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
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?
