[Sigia-l] Rant about bad IA practice.

[Samantha Bailey]

> 'Eye Tracking'
>
> Simply put, you can see what the user is looking at but not what they are seeing.  You need to know what the users are thinking and the best way is to talk to them.  Eye tracking is snake oil as far as I'm concerned.  If your user experience consultant suggests eye tracking - fire their carpet bagging arse. Are you listening Jakob?
>

I have had a very different, largely positive, experience with eye tracking.

Most of the people I know who are doing eye tracking, and the eye
tracking studies I've done, have been qualitative studies where
traditional think-aloud methods are applied and the eye tracking is
used as an additional datapoint. Subsequently we get to see where
they're looking and probe about what they're seeing.

We did one quantitative eye tracking study (40 participants, no
talking) and I found that experience far less useful, so I'm inclined
to agree that eye tracking as a stand alone method is of dubious
value.

That said, I've found the eye tracking datapoints to be extremely
valuable in the following ways:
-it changed my assumptions as a usability practitioner--I used to
follow the movements of the mouse and thought that was an indicator of
what the participant was looking at. When we did eye tracking we found
very little correlation between mouse location and eyes on the screen.
Subsequently, I now give less credence to mouse movements, especially
when reviewing tapes
-it gives us another datapoint that can help us change/refine our test
questions/scenarios and be more efficient with our testing. For
example, we did a test where we were dealing with some content that a
small percentage of users clicked through and we wanted to know if the
low click-through was because they didn't *see* the content or didn't
perceive it to be valuable. We went into the study with several
alternative designs that were, to our eyes, alternatives that would
stand out much more. What we found was that the answer to our question
about the initial design was definitely that people didn't see the
content but ALSO that they didn't see it in the new designs--we had to
really change our approach to create something that both stood out and
yet still fit with the design
-it fascinates business partners and gets them to pay more attention
when observing sessions, which helps me engage their expertise for
better design and build my case for increasing the role that  UX plays
in our work (from miniscule to small, but it's a start).

-Samantha