Note: The Advanced Eye Interpretation Project team has moved on to Eyetools, Inc. Eyetools provides the stable platform and the necessary business structure to offer a reliable service to companies that wish to take advantage of the years of eye-movement research performed at Stanford. After working with the Poynter Institute and Stanford's Department of Communication to examine how on-line news readers behave, it became clear that eyetracking can have a huge impact on helping companies improve their visitor satisfaction and retention by providing eyetracking feedback to guide web site creation and redesign. We believe that by combining the intellectual property and patents developed at the Advanced Eye Interpretation Project with the business support of Eyetools, Inc. that a winning combination has been found. Please visit us at www.eyetools.com. Additionally, as a continuing service to the research and disability fields, our research page is still available below (please scroll down) and please feel free to call with general research or disability related questions.
Thank you,
Greg Edwards
Previous Project Lead, Advanced Eye Interpretation Project, Stanford University
Founder, Eyetools, Inc.
gedwards@eyetools.com
(510) 440-1600
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The Usefulness of Eyetracking Do you know what people ignore on your web site? Do you know at what point in your documentation customers stop reading and call your tech support line? Do you know what users are doing between clicks? Do you know whether your users get the intended impact from your application? Would you like to know? Understanding User Behavior We are The Advanced Eye Interpretation Project at Stanford University. Our research focuses on the human side of eyetracking: eye-movements, what they are, what they mean, and how they reflect a computer user's mental states. We study eye-movement because when a person uses a computer the person's eye-movements convey a continual stream of information about his or her mental state. By modeling typical eye-movement behavior we can develop tools to better understand user behavior. We can also develop next-generation tools that will enable people to control computers with their eyes. Analysis Tools As a user interacts with a computer our software runs in the background recording the user's eye-movements, all keyboard and mouse activity, and the images displayed on the computer screen. The user's eye-movements are recorded by a top-of-the-line eyetracker, which allows the user to interact comfortably with the computer.Our visualization and analysis software correlates what was displayed on the screen with keyboard and mouse activity and the user's eye-movements, providing a clear picture of user activity and the ability to generate numbers to quantify and qualify cross-subject data. User ModelingOur patented work on inferring mental states from eye-movement patterns allows us to better describe what users are doing. This ongoing research moves beyond merely asking where a person's eyes are focused, but aims to infer high-level behaviors from observing various patterns of eye-movement. Interesting results become apparent when behaviors such as "reading" and "searching" are analyzed as users interact with dynamic, complex applications. The Future: Eye-Control of Computers We can apply the ability to understand how users perceive current technology to research next-generation technology. We have developed (and are developing) the "Eye Interpretation Engine," which actually does the work of analyzing eye-movement in search of recognizable patterns. The Eye Interpretation Engine parses eye-position data into higher-level patterns that can then be used to infer a user's mental state or behavior. Because the Engine encapsulates our research on eye-movements, applications can be written that make use of behavioral tokens without requiring the application-developer to be an expert in eye-movement. We ourselves used the Eye Interpretation Engine early on to write an on-screen keyboard and mouse controller that enabled people to "type with their eyes" and control the mouse. The keyboard reacted differently to the user when the user was searching for the next letter to type. Doing so increased user's enjoyment of the system and reduced the number of incorrectly selected letters because it allowed the user to search for the next letter at a leisurely rate. Apply Our Research to Your Problem We are continuing to develop the tools and methods necessary to do exciting research. Why do you look at a person's eyes? Because they look nice? Because it's polite? Sure. But you can now look because the person's eye-movements provide you with continual feedback about the mental state of the person as he is studying your material. Contact Greg Edwards, Senior Researcher Updated: December 1, 1999 |
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Research
Stanford Poynter Eyetrack Project: What do people do when they read on-line news? How much do they read on which providers? The Stanford/Poynter Eyetrack2000 Project is analyzing typical users' eye-movements and surfing behavior as they read on-line news to answer these (and many more) questions. The Poynter Institute, a school for journalists, is funding this study in order to challenge the assumptions that news organizations make in designing their web presence. Understanding actual user behavior will lead to better presentation of the news. Some
statistics for this research: The
Stanford Poynter Project concludes in December 1999 and final results
will be available through this site as well as through Poynter's.
We are finding some interesting results. As a sample, one result
we have found is this: Participants:
Previous Research: User Modeling and Eye-Control of Computers A nontechnical paper describing uses of eyetracking and software applications that would benefit from using eyetracking is published in the Proceedings of the CSUN 98 (March 1998): New Software Makes Eyetracking Viable: You Can Control Computers With Your Eyes. A technical paper describing the very early workings of the Eye Interpretation Engine is published in the Proceedings of ASSETS 98 (April 1998): A Tool for Creating Eye-aware Applications that Adapt to Changes in User Behavior. |
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