Smart Cookie: Eye-tracking for usability
Our featured Smart Cookie, information architect Laura Crofton-Atkins, looks at eye-tracking. When used smartly, says Laura, eye-tracking is a powerful tool to support usability testing and help maximise ROI.
Eye-tracking sounds almost too good to be true. It’s literally a way of seeing your own website with your users’ eyes, following their thought processes as they make their journey through your content.
When we read a website – or anything else on screen – our eyes dart about, skimming and scanning in the hunt for killer content. We process information very quickly, acting on impulse, ruthlessly sizing up and dismissing content options. Eye-tracking software records these eye movements, giving you information about the movements users don’t even remember making.
In interview, users may not always tell the whole truth about what they looked at, but eye-tracking provides a candid, unmediated account recorded in real time.
But like any usability technique, eye-tracking is only as good as the people who carry it out. It’s only really useful if you know what you want to use it for. And its findings are only as good as your ability to interpret them.
In interview, users may not always tell the whole truth about what they looked at, but eye-tracking provides a candid, unmediated account recorded in real time.
How we use eye-tracking
Eye-tracking is not in itself a new methodology, and it can be tempting to want to use it on everything and everyone at every stage of the design–and–build process. But our experience shows that for eye-tracking to deliver optimal results, and have a positive impact on ROI, it needs to be deployed wisely…
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Use eye-tracking early on
Eye-tracking is best used in the early stages of the design process. It’s a great tool for testing out rival concepts at a point where radical changes can be made with only minimal disruption.
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Know the questions you want answered
There should always be a strong strategic focus to any eye-tracking programme. It’s vital to have a strong clear sense of the question(s) you want to address. Which of these designs works best? Does this promotion effectively attract attention? Is the copy here clear and intuitive?
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Eye-tracking and other user testing
Eye-tracking is most effective when used as one element of a comprehensive range of usability tests, such as psychological questioning. Playing back a session and asking users why they looked where they did – and why they didn’t look where they didn’t – can deliver invaluable insights.
Eye-tracking: the bottom line
Properly used, eye-tracking can help deliver tangible ROI by helping developers to come up with new designs that accurately reflect user expectations and behaviour, often resulting in increased sales and greater product awareness.
