Mark C. Russell published at usability news a paper about ” Hotspots and Hyperlinks: Using Eye-tracking to Supplement Usability Testing”:
“This article discusses how eye-tracking can be used to supplement traditional usability test measures. User performance on two usability tasks with three e-commerce websites is described. Results show that eye-tracking data can be used to better understand how users initiate a search for a targeted link or web object. Frequency, duration and order of visual attention to Areas of Interest (AOIs) in particular are informative as supplemental information to standard usability testing in understanding user expectations and making design recommendations.
(…)
Much can be learned about the nature of the user experience in the comparison of user visual attention afforded to different areas of web interfaces. Specifically, the use of eye-tracking data allows usability professionals to gather more information about what areas of interest (AOIs) are potentially: (1) most eye-catching; (2) most informative; (3) most frequently ignored; and (4) most distracting. In this way eye-tracking can be used to determine not only whether users are successful at navigating to a particular page of a website, but also where and how they search the interface for a targeted link or web object. This use of eye-tracking data as supplemental information to standard usability testing can be very informative as to both user expectations and resulting design recommendations.
The results of this study emphasize the importance of interpreting user eye-movement data in usability testing within the context of the interface being evaluated. In future studies, AOI eye-tracking could also be utilized not only within a single webpage or interface screen, but also across different pages of a site (see Pan et al., 2004), multiple exposures to a site (see Josephson and Holmes, 2002), and between different stages of a complex usability task. These comparisons could also be performed both in terms of iterative studies between different versions of web page/site and comparative studies between entirely different websites.”
Internetverweis
Usability News: Hotspots and Hyperlinks: Using Eye-tracking to Supplement Usability Testing
