Eye Tracking - Data Presentation

Data Presentation

To allow interpretation of the data that is recorded by the various types of eye trackers exist various software that animates or visually represents it, so that the visual behavior of one or more users can be graphically resumed. The following ones are the most commonly used:

Animated representations of a point on the interface This method is used when the visual behavior is examined individually indicating where did the user focus his/her gaze in each moment, complemented with a small path that indicates the previous saccade movements, as seen in the image.

Static representations of the saccade path This is fairly similar to the one described above with the difference that this is static method. A higher level of expertise than with the animated ones is required to interpret this.

Heat maps An alternative static representation, mainly used for the agglomerated analysis of the visual exploration patterns in a group of users, differing from both methods explained before. In these representations, the ‘hot’ zones or zones with higher density designate where the users focused their gazes with a higher frequency.

Blind zones maps This method is a simplified version of the Heat maps where the visually less attended zones by the users are displayed clearly, thus allowing for an easier understanding of the most relevant information, that is to say, we are informed about which zones were not seen by the users.

The four methods described above are extremely useful and easy to understand in a later analysis. With them we can easily show the client with a single image that the users don’t explore the interface in an orderly way as it is commonly believed.