[Sigia-l] eye tracking?

[Bill Killam]

>Am I correct in assuming you are suggesting that without conscious
recognition information the eye takes has no impact?

No impact is a hard statement to deal with.  But it depends of what effect
you are talking about.

>So how do subliminal messages fit?  Are such messages just to semantically
impoverished to be relevant to information architecture or user interface
design?  

Subliminal messages are not good examples of the issue if the discussion is
about usable designs, though it might be from a marketing standpoint.  The
effects of a "subliminal message" are, by definition, unconscious
(subliminal).  The user is not aware of the image, yet the effect on the
user's thoughts or behavior may be detected (or at least presumed).  This is
a far cry from the user's eye passing over something that the user is
intended to be aware of consciously but they fail to process for any number
of reasons - generally interaction effects between perception and cognitive
processing.  E.g., a user perceiving an element on a web site as an ad when
it's actually primary functionality because of its placement and other
visual characteristics.  Other forms of banner blindness fall into this
category as well (like when user's are unable to recall ever seeing an ad,
error message, instructions, or examples despite having "looked" directly at
them at some point.  Conscious failure to attend to a visual element
prevents it from passing from the visual perception system to long term
memory.  Or a user looking directly at a link in a non-standard location and
failing to recognize its existence since they do not expect to find it there
(the lost home link effect on many web sites).

Bill
-------------------------------------------------------
Bill Killam, MA CHFP
President, User-Centered Design, Inc.
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