Eyes wide shut - usability test by eye tracking

IMAODBC

Avila, Spain 25-29 September 2006Annegrete Wulff, Statistics Denmark

awu@dst.dk

What I’ll be talking about

• Eye tracking as a method• Tasks and solutions• Some live navigation examples• Conclusions regarding the method

About the method

• Equipment built into a monitor

• Web camera and infra light sources

• Measure eye movements and transforms them to what the users see

What we can learn

• 10 test users, 10 tasks• Do people pay attention to our

logo?• Where should we place the most

valuable content?• What confuses visitors on the site?

Find info about the municipality reform

Search functionUse the search to find number of cars

Read the links

Reading subject areas in StatBank

Video

• Find info on municipality changes (and print it)

• Find the numbers of cars (use search function)

• Find the number of Swedish citizens in Denmark (do not use search)

Pros ……

• The user feels anonymous• Pre-test functionality and design • Understand user behaviour and

audience responses• Test results combined with

interviews

….. et cons

• do not separate different layers• should not stand alone• the user continues for longer time to

find a correct answer• expensive equipment

Conclusions

• We don’t always see what we look at• Putting information on the web doesn’t

make it accessible• Use short pages, short lines• Do as other web sites • Combining different test methods helps

us in understanding our users