Author Archives: Lionel Barrow
What else you should know about the human eye
We had an incredible response to our blog post on the human eye a few weeks ago; many commentators asked if we had a few more facts floating around that we could share. As it turns out, we do. Here … Continue reading
Tagged human eye, usability
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Relentlessly focus on your customers: test usability
Many tech firms pride themselves on listening to their customers and fine-tuning their product based on customer feedback. Startups in particular are known for relentlessly seeking ways to better match products with customers’ needs. Many other aspects of hacker culture, … Continue reading
Tagged startups, technology, usability
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Beyond heatmaps: visualizing eye tracking data
Eye tracking data is notoriously hard to represent visually. It’s dense, high dimensional, and can’t be compressed without losing important information. The industry standard graphic, a heatmap of the combined tracks of all participants in a study, does a good … Continue reading
Tagged clustering, eye tracking, heatmaps, visualizations
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Where do users look first?
Where do your users look first? Most people running a web site have asked themselves this question at some point. It’s a good question to ask: capturing a user’s attention and steering him or her towards the important areas of … Continue reading
Tagged eye tracking, heatmaps, usability
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Experienced users view Reddit differently
Everyone at GazeHawk loves reddit, so we decided to run a study tracking the eye movement of people looking at reddit. Here’s how it worked: we recorded the (x, y) coordinates of where our study participants looked while checking out … Continue reading
Tagged eye tracking, eye tracking study, heatmaps
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What everyone should know about the human eye
Odds are, you will one day build something someone will see. Here are three key findings from people who study how people see to keep in mind for your next project. Eyes are not cameras Cameras move slowly, smoothly and … Continue reading
Tagged human eye, usability
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How do people look at Apple’s movie trailers page?
Two weeks ago, we started an eye-tracking study of Apple’s iTunes movie trailers site. Originally, we had hoped to do a demographic breakdown of the study results — what posters did men like, what posters did women like, that sort of … Continue reading
Cluster analysis for concise results in eye tracking
Eye tracking data is received as a dense, high-entropy stream of coordinates. This data is then redistributed using methods that will help display results and identify trends. The most common method we use for displaying results is a heatmap which illustrates … Continue reading
Tagged clustering, heatmaps, visualizations
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Don’t get burned by heatmaps
Eye tracking companies, including GazeHawk, frequently use heatmaps to present the results of a study to customers. The reason for this is simple: heatmaps instantly communicate where study participants looked and for how long. They tell you the hot spots … Continue reading
Tagged eye tracking, heatmaps, visualizations
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