A short presentation for UX Camp Brighton on what I learned from six months of experimenting with an eye tracking device.

1. Eye Tracking
What I learned from 6 months of experimenting
UX Camp Brighton - November 15th 2014

2. Eye Tracking Device
• Bought in the summer (cheaper than they used to be!)
• Various ideas of how we could use it
• Tried a few tests to see what we could find out…

3. A quick demo
Any volunteers?!?

4. What did we test?
• General demos to show off the device to people.
• Tests on design mock-up ideas to compare variations.
• Various tests on ecommerce sites to find patterns of areas of attention.
• Assisting a local student with an eye-tracking study for her dissertation

5. Call To Action Study
…one study got picked up by popular digital marketing blog
Econsultancy.
• What design features draw attention to CTA buttons?
• Some tests were based on previous studies
• Some were new ideas
• Four tests in total, with two variations per test
• Study taken by 62 people of varying ages/genders

6. Moving the Call to Action

7. Moving the Call to Action

8. Follow the eyes…

9. Follow the eyes…

10. Use of arrows

11. Use of arrows

12. Flat vs. skeuomorphic

13. Flat vs. skeuomorphic

14. What did we learn?

15. What did we learn?
Is it good if people look at the CTA button?
- They (probably) know the button is there
- They could be focusing on the product
- Doesn’t mean they’re going to click it!
- Test is only for seven seconds
- Test is flawed (user is aware of the eye
tracking)

16. Study Picked up by
Econsultancy

17. The Good…
• Clients love it
• It’s a unique way of testing
• Nice heatmaps!
• Can be fairly quick to run
• It’s a gimmick (good for publicity)
• Can give useful insight, if used alongside other methods
• Some useful ‘discoveries’ e.g. the ‘F-Shape pattern
• Useful during wireframing/prototyping to get quick feedback
• Fairly simple to set up and run
• Good for attention/publicity (e.g . the Econsultancy article has over
500 shares)

18. The Bad…
• Can be inaccurate
• Can be expensive
• Can be inaccurate
• Doesn’t tell you ‘why’, just ‘what
• Might not work on users with glasses
• Light conditions can cause innacuracies
• Need a lot of test subjects to get results
• Tests cannot measure peripheral vision
• Almost impossible to get users acting naturally
• Can be seen as a gimmick (bad for reputation)

19. I’m unconvinced but…
Eye Tracking is just another tool that we can
use to gain insight into our users. It may be
flawed but used correctly, for the correct
purpose, at the correct time, it can add
something to the overall process.

20. Questions??

21. Thanks
www.lukehay.co.uk
luke@lukehay.co.uk
twitter.com/hayluke

22. Want more?
Read my blog post on the
Pros and Cons of Eye Tracking
Read the Call to Action study
on Econsultancy