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     INTRODUCING THE GROUND BREAKING EYE-TRACKING TECHNOLOGY
       29 August 2008
       ABIB Conference Centre
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BCCI & SABC business luncheon held at ABIB Conference Centre, 29 August, introducing the ground breaking Eye-Tracking Technology available at the University of the Free State.

A very stylish event was hosted by the BCCI in sponsorship with the SABC on August 29 at ABIB (formally known as Leopards and Lace). The beautiful surrounding of this centre, the stretched-out lawns, trees and lavender bushes all contributed to a tranquil atmosphere. To add even more to the peaceful atmosphere was the music from a string quartet who played on the veranda.

CONTRIBUTION FROM THE SABC
The Regional Manager (Free State and Northern Cape) Mr Vincent Tsoenyane, delivered a presentation on the readiness of the SABC for the 2010 Soccer World Cup Tournament. He also addressed other strategic matters relating to future plans of the National Broadcaster as well as introducing the DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television).

LESEDI FM was represented by Lawrence Ubisi, Programmes Manager. His presentation gave very interesting facts about Lesedi FM, their target audience, airtime, presenters as well as the objectives of the Radio station – the largest in the Free State and third largest in the country.

CONTRIBUTION BY THE UNIVERSITY’S COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
The ground breaking Eye-tracking technology at the Department of Computer Science and Informatics at the UFS, was presented and demonstrated by Prof Pieter Blignaut. This amazing technology will forever change the way you perceive advertising, marketing, branding, etc. Eye-tracking provides a whole new dimension to website usability and advertising studies. It provides tools that enable cost-effective research studies to provide statistical data that can be utilized to achieve more effective and efficient marketing and publication strategies.

How does this new tool work:
A number of people will be selected and will get an opportunity to look at a webpage, and advert or any other printed or media material. The eye-tracker will record all eye movements, mouse clicks and keyboard strokes:

• The first important metric is a sequence of user’s fixations (where the person looks at), known as the scan-path. This identifies points on the web page that the user fixated on, and gives great insight into the user’s cognitive process.

• To understand the behaviour of a group of persons, the metrics are based on total or average results from the entire group. Typical examples include “hotspots” or “heat maps” and certain statistical metrics. The colour of these hotspots will indicate the most viewed areas on the page. The brighter the spot the more it was fixated on.

The picture to the left shows a heat map on an advert for a skin product. This heat map was generated by the eye-tracker. Areas on the page that received more attention from the readers are clearly shown according to the colour coding – red being the most looked at areas. It is evident that this information could help a designer or marketer to determine whether and advert has the desired effect.

On the photo to the left, people looked mostly at the eyes of the model, then the text and then at the skincare product.  With the photo to the right, she was looking down at the skincare product and just notice how the fixations increased on the text of the product.

• People can also be asked to perform a task(s) on specified internet sites, like booking a week’s holiday at a specific resort. This will be done browsing through the internet sites, while feedback from the system can be observed by the eye-tracker device recording eye-movement, clicks and keyboard strokes; even in an adjacent room.

• After completing testing with all subjects, the analysis software is used to extract metrics and visualizations that will allow the interpretation of the study. Now ideas of design improvements can be communicated to the customer.

What do users see?
One of the most obvious questions answered by eye-tracking is “What did people see?” This can be a very important issue if the element you are interested in is a key message or a vital offer to your customer. Design and marketing teams spend vast resources developing and promoting messages and it is critical to find out if these messages are getting across and if not, why not.

Where valuable content should be placed
Eye-tracking data obviously points to the attractiveness and/or the level of attention people focus on the various visual elements or sections of an advert or a webpage. This allows you to focus the important information on the areas of the advert or webpage which will provide the greatest return on investment. Effort placed on high traffic areas may provide measurable higher results than those on unused sections. The eye-tracking information will easily show when a page has text or visual elements which are “dead” or unused space.

What happened in the breakdown event?
One of the most important events to fully understand in usability testing is what truly occurs when the subject finds a problem or has some sort of issue – what is often called a “breakdown event”. Having the eye-tracking information, you can see exactly which piece of text or button is causing them to frown, what they are looking at when explaining their frustrations. This can provide clues to understanding the breakdown event and proposing an optimal solution to the issue.

How effectively do users complete a task?
Another important question is how effectively users are able to find the information or do the tasks they were assigned to do. The eye-tracker assists to measure “time to success” of a task. When viewing the eye-tracking information in real-time, one would see the person go to the correct area and then leave without a seemingly appropriate response. This would prompt a question to the subject what their thought processes were in continuing to search when they have found the correct information.

Stunning Deliverables
It is often difficult to choose a visual design for an advert, a website, a newsletter or any other marketing material. Individuals in the customer’s organization, designers and developers often have strong opinions on what will work or won’t work in the visual design. These opinions are just that, opinions. They are often not backed up by any proof at all. It is extremely difficult to convince someone that their opinion of how a page/advert should be laid out is incorrect. Eye-tracking provides conclusive, measurable and repeatable performance measures of a particular visual layout. Even with small sample sizes and an early prototype page you should be able to effectively choose and justify the visual design.