[IxDA Discuss] Eye tracking, how valuable is it?

[adamya ashk]

I'm late to this thread. However, I have to chime in.

Eyetracking is near useless in predicting how people will use your
site/application/widget. It can never take the place of a seasoned
usability practitioner plying his trade through careful user interview
or analysis of click-stream data

But, (and there is always a 'but' in our field) I think it can be
tremendously useful to find out where people look when they come to
your site/application/widget. It can give you the 'dead spots'. The
places where ninety percent or so of users 'don't' look. 'Look where?'
you might say or 'look for what?'.

Well, let's say you have your 'average' corporate home page which is
averagely busy. And your company happens to launch this great service,
a link to which finds it's way to the said homepage. You hope to drive
traffic to this service but the process of getting this link on the
homepage or at least getting people to agree to it has been a
political process. Someone's stuff is going to be pushed out or maybe
below the fold, now that everyone's behind the idea.

How do you determine the spot you would shoot for? What impact would
this link have on other important areas? In these situations an
eye-tracking study can be really useful in determining what goes where
and how things will change.

And as someone mentioned mentioned above, results gathered over time
combined with click-stream data can give you a valuable picture of
what users are doing.

-Adamya

PS A big hello to Prof. Athavankar. I hope you are well.

On 7/7/06, Mark Schraad <mschraad at mac.com> wrote:

> >>
> >>> 2. How valuable is it? What can you say based on eye-tracking data?
> >>