UX Tools

The Grinbath EyeGuide by Tanner Hefner

While the Grinbath’s EyeGuide system contains many features useful to a UX specialist, the following following describes core components and how the device works. The EyeGuide is one of the best external devices for tracking where users look on a screen, and the Writing Lab could the EyeGuide in future UX studies.

How it Works

The EyeGuide works by using a camera that is focused on a user’s pupil. The user wears a headband with the device attached to an arm that hangs in front of one of their eyes. The camera has an infrared LED light attached that shines directly into the user’s eye that helps illuminate the eye for the camera; the light cannot be seen by the user. This makes it so the pupil stands out from the rest of the eye. The camera video feed is transmitted to a computer where the researcher sees through the camera. A crosshair is on this video feed which allows the user to center the camera exactly on the center of the user’s pupil. When the camera is perfectly centered, when the user changes the direction in which they are looking, the crosshair position is no longer on the crosshair. The computer tracks how far the crosshair has moved from the center of the eye and which direction it moved and translates this into where a user was focused on a computer screen.

There is a calibration process at the beginning of the eye tracking process where the computer software displays several targets and asks the user to stare at them until they disappear. This helps the software determine where on the screen if the crosshair moved off the center of the pupil.

What Information is Collected

Data from the eye guide can be presented in many different ways. The simplest way that the data can be presented is a recording of where the user was looking. The software records the computer screen throughout a test and places a small dot on the screen that illustrates where the user was looking. This dot moves around the screen and matches where the user was focused. This method, while simple, doesn’t utilize all of the features that the EyeGuide is capable of.

One of the more interesting data visualization features that the EyeGuide offers is the ability to create a heat map. In this data presentation, the software analyzes where a user spent the most time on the screen looking. If a user only glanced at a certain portion of the page, that area is highlighted in blue. However, if the user spent more time looking at an area, the color is changed to a brighter red or yellow based on how long the user looked at the area. This feature is great for finding the areas of a webpage where users spend the most time looking. These areas are where the important content should be.

One final feature that the EyeGuide offers for data visualization is focus points. For this representation, the software analyzes where the user looked. If a user spent a short amount of time (more than just gazing over it) looking at a certain point, the point is marked with a dot and labeled with a number. When the user focuses on another spot, a line is drawn to the new spot, a dot is drawn and the number labeled on the second dot increases. This process continues labeling the various spots a user looked on the interface in order. This allows the researcher to analyze patterns of what areas of the screen a user looks at and in what order he looks at them.