On Aug 17, 2009, at 4:23 AM, Caroline Jarrett wrote:
Jared:
When a consultant looks at eye tracking results
and says, "The user clearly sees X
but they don't see Y", they are making **it up.
And using their tools badly.
Yet, that's what they do. Remember Spool's First Law of Competency: It
takes no skill to do something poorly. So, if you don't have skills,
you'll use the tools badly.
What's with the hate campaign on eye-trackers, Jared?
I don't hate eye-trackers. I think, as a piece of hardware, it's very
cool. It's got lots of great applications. Hell, I even worked on
projects for the Navy, Army, and NASA that made very cool use of eye
tracking.
In fact, I'm surprised that the IxD world hasn't jumped all over these
devices. They bring a level of interaction (using eye movement to
control the device) that you can't get otherwise. Imagine popping up
menus by staring at a specific button, then selecting the right object
by just fixating on a control handle, for starters. Combine it with
touch and voice, and you have a really huge increase in multi-modal
interaction. Lots of interesting possibilities here.
This reminds me of the olden days when we first had video. It was an
expensive technology. It took time to learn to use, and to learn how
to use
it properly. Agencies used it as a differentiator ("we have
video!!!") when
they weren't strong enough to differentiate on the quality of their
thinking. Clients liked it. It was a (relative) waste of money.
Then, I found that the real benefit was that it allowed me to show
clients,
quite easily, things that I'd had to learn how to see in many, many
sessions.
Eventually, video got cheap and easy. Now I'd routinely record stuff
because
the overhead is minimal and sometimes, but by no means always, it's
helpful
to show clients selections from the records and even (gasp)
sometimes to
watch them myself to remind myself of something.
Maybe I don't get this analogy because every lab I've ever worked in,
starting back when we built the first software usability testing lab
had video. Costs have definitely come down, but that's not what we're
talking about. The value of video has always been understood.
Now - fast forward to eye-trackers. An expensive technology, etc
etc, right
up to (relative) waste of money. It's just technology! It's not a
magic
bullet that will help the hard-of-thinking to do a better job.
And coming to the substantive point: I've used TOBII eye-trackers.
They are
indeed expensive, the software is expensive, and it's expensive to
keep up
with the upgrades. I looked quite seriously at getting one for a
client who
had a short-term surplus money problem, but it was easy to decide to
hire
one on the occasions that we considered it might be useful. They are
relatively easy to use, but they don't infallibly track everything.
This isn't about making eye trackers more cost effective. It's about
whether they add *any* value at all.
I contend they don't.
I contend, at best, they are theatrical devices to demonstrate a
theory of use gleaned elsewhere. If we just declared them as that --
as, like the video you talked about, a tool "to show clients things
that you'd learned" -- I'd be ok. We state clearly that we use them
purely for demonstration purposes. I could get behind that.
Where I start on my little rants is when people contend they'll learn
something from an eye tracker that they can't learn by just watching
users. It's not true. There's no evidence to support that statement.
And, what they claim they learn is often wrong. Wrong learnings lead
to wrong decisions. That's bad.
And, when people tell me that a nice TOBII system costs $30,000+, I
look at that money and see 60 non-eye-tracking usability sessions.
That's getting the team in front of 60 people, where they'll learn far
more than by watching the red dot bounce around the screen for a small
handful of folks with the budget they have left after they bought a
device that will inevitably sit in a corner months later.
If we can all agree that eye trackers are great tools for
demonstration purposes only, then I'll stop my "hate campaign," as you
called it.
Jared
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