Eye Tracking Method in Human-Computer Interaction: Assessing the Interaction based on the Eye Movement Data

Abstract

Nowadays most of the day today services we receive are based upon computer systems. Services such as information searching or online shopping are considered among the most frequent online information systems’ services. Users assess and process the information they receive from information systems. The theory of mind information processing asserts that humans process and analyze the information they receive from their environment. This theory also deals with the perception and recognition. User-interface paves the way regarding using and reaching the goal for the ultimate users. If user-interface is designed properly, the way through which the user reaches his/her goal would be a logical one; otherwise the lack of solidarity would result in system misuse. In other words if the user-interface grabs the user’s attention, the interaction with the user would be successful. For studying the human-computer interaction a lot of methods have been proposed. Eye-tracking method is one of them. This method makes it possible to gather qualitative and quantitative data in this regard. Eyesight is very important regarding human perception, thus its data could be invaluable. The basis of this method is mind-eye theory which says eyes’movements could show the attention of a person regarding a picture or stimuli. This attention could report passion or problem. There are different types of eye movement, such as a fixation and saccade. Eye tracking delivers a voluminous data regarding users’ attention in the form of quick and unconscious processes. Analyzing the eye-movement data is hard and its data extraction is tedious. Moreover the test environment and users’ health are also of great importance in this regard. At last one must mention that eye movement data is invaluable for assessing the bottom-up cognition of the world and the top-down perception of mind.

Keywords

• human-computer interaction
• eye tracking
• eye tracker
• eye movements
• user-interface
• computer systems
• web