We have recently started selling a great tool from iMotions in Denmark. It’s called the Attention Tool. It can be used to test static images, like ads, package designs, web banners or web page images to work out:
1. if someone looked at the key parts of the image,
2. if they actually read any text on the image and importantly,
3. the persons level of emotional arousal with the image.
You can use it at our EyeTrackLab, Sydney!
Launched this week, Tobii Glasses are a revolution in eye tracking. Unobtrusive technology that doesn’t interrupt the users view and also is not so noticeable by passers by.
Of course you can track mobile devices using them. Here’s a Swedish colleague having a go with the Wired app on an iPad.
Can you see an application for them?
Set up a demo in Australia or a demo elsewhere in the world.
I had a realisation the other day! Much of the stuff that is (I have) written on the web about UX and Usability is a bit high brow for most of our clients!
I’ve renamed our Objective Digital blog “Understanding Usability” to make it really clear what clients will get on the blog. I’ve also added a swag of new OD FAQs. These are the sorts of questions I get asked everyday in sales calls and project scoping meetings. For example,
The blog posts are contextually linked on our site as FAQs. Here’s an example on the usability testing page:
I’ve also summarised all the FAQs in a new FAQs section.
What do you think?
I am regularly asked how eye tracking, or gaze contingent eye control, will be used in consumer applications in the future. It is a tricky area, as our eyes are not good at fine motor control. Until recently, the technologies to accommodate for our eyes’ capabilities and allow gaze control have not been readily available; but things are changing!
In this post I’d like to introduce the concept of eye control as we know it and then show some new work on reading eBooks or the Web that really gets me excited!
For many years, Tobii Assistive Technology has been providing solutions for people with physical disabilities to control the computer with their eyes. The cost and size for these devices is rapidly decreasing. Making it much more accessible to a wider range of people. You can see Chris using a new Tobii C12 with CEye in the following YouTube video.
Thanks Chris!! (mobiletobii).
At a more specialised level it is widely recognised that eye tracking may help the design process by allowing people to do more things than their hands can alone. For example, Terry Winograd and his Stanford researchers report named “Eye Expose” tested people switching between applications with their eyes.
Eye tracking has also been successfully trialled for very simplistic menu interactions in laproscopic surgery, where Doctors can use an eye tracker to do things on the screen while their hands are busy. (Tien, 2005 and Tien and Atkins, 2008 [PDFs].
Eye tracking has also been done plenty of times in the gaming context. There are plenty of Tobii based research papers online and I have previously blogged about it. Tobii also promotes arcade gaming, facilitated by their new OEM technology, on their website.
Here’s a Tobii X120 used for controlling World of Warcraft.
You can also see a comprehensive list of eye control games research on Cogain’s Wiki.
So, where is all this headed?
Recently, I found an example from some researchers at The German Research Centre for Artificial intelligence (DFKI). They used a Tobii C12 with the Tobii CEye eye control module to show how interaction with a book can be augmented with the eyes, for everyone!
Exciting hey?
Here’s a further introduction to their concept of Text2.0.
I love the bit at the end where the system faded out the irrelevant text once it knew you were speed reading.
I did a quick search of Tobii’s DIIGO database of academic eye tracking asbtracts and also found that Stanford Researchers, Manu Kumar and Terry Winograd also did a small study using a Tobii 1750 to augment reading by inducing scrolling behaviour.
Research on consumer eye control applications is significantly advanced and it might not be long before all of us can have it at home!
Apple! Please strap some of this kit onto your next iPad please!!
Have you seen great examples of cutting edge technology research pointing toward ways of improving the consumer experience? Please share them with me!
I’ve been watching a recent Top Gear episode and learnt the reason behind a little usability rule about capital letters. Top Gear were interviewing Margaret Calvert who worked on the design of Britian’s road signs in the 50’s and she described a little about the typography used in signs.
On road signs you will rarely see words written in only CAPITAL letters. It is easier to recognise a complete word if it starts with a capital, followed by lowercase letters. This is because lower case letters are significantly more different to each other than capitals.
As a UX consultant, I get frustrated by clients and designers who think that user-centred research, particularly senior executive stakeholder interviews, is done simply to tick the box of, “I did some research”.
What really pains me is the comment, “Don’t worry, we’ve already done interviews with stakeholders and you don’t need to do it again”.
I always retort:
People miss the point of doing research with senior staff members of the organisation.
Of course, it’s about getting stakeholder buy in, but any one can do that. However, any new consulting project should have some forum where the team members hear the strategic issues, for themselves. Not just the biased version from the internal project team. Consultants need to build a picture of the organisation and identify opportunities; so that every design decision that flows from there on in meets the strategic business and personal needs of the client and, more importantly, their customers.
Also, don’t forget, doing this research also allows the stakeholders need to voice their opinion, without biasing their view because their fellow staff member is in the room.
User centred design is not about hearding cats for the sake of it. There’s a reason for every step and if you don’t know why your doing something, ask.
My Boy Ben
I think that many schools miss the point about how social media can be leveraged in education. I recently read:
“Social media is a fast, free and easy way of reaching the parents, teachers, students and staff members in your community…”
Correct, but oh so wrong!
Social media is not a tool simply for communicating with the school community. I think that communicating with the community is a by-product of using social media for education. (And it is really really easy and just needs a process and allocated responsibilities and prioritised usage over other ‘normal’ channels).
If the tool does not add any direct value to how kids learn then everything else is a waste. Simply a duplication of processes that work fine right now and another way to bombard people (parents and kids) with more information.
Kids at shool should be using social media to:
- Invent stuff together (yammer)
- Collaborate on school projects (joint editing of documents)
- Store and share knowledge (wikis, social bookmarking)
- Engage in creative endeavours (games)
- Do more work (better note taking and sharing)
- Learn in better ways (online mind maps)
- Remember things (note taking iPhone apps)
- Plan - their lives and homework
- To set targets and get rewards from peers (similar to organisational mangement systems)
- Share knowledge about things they do outside of school with people from school and learn from it (online photos, trip planners, diaries and videos etc etc)
Plus communicate with parents and friends. But that is already done quite well. I believe teaching can be dramatically improved by applying social media tools in ways that leverage their capabilities to improve learning, not just for more communication!
Did you see Avatar in 3D?
What captured your attention?
I recently discovered an academic paper nominated for the Tobii EyeTrackAwards (PDF) about Stereographic (3D) eye tracking compared to regular 2D. The Finnish (Nokia Research Centre) and Japanese researchers used a Tobii X120 eye tracker to track a large Hyundai Stereoscopic display.
How has 3D changed cinematography?
I’m sure James Cameron considered that:
The way that this type of information is generally discovered by movie makers, is to ask viewers to describe their experiences. However, the full experience can not ever be completely described as some things are not fully accessible to conscious thought. This is where eye tracking comes in. It allows us to see what people focus on the screen immediately, although it may not be processed consciously.
3D (more processing) 2D (less processing)
In a 3D movie people are ‘forced’ to consider more parts of the screen that they normally would. This gives them a richer and more immersive experience.
What do you think?
The My School website, myschool.edu.au, has been heavily discussed in the media. While the website experienced some initial technical difficulties, it is the comparison of ‘statistically similar schools’ via the Index of Community Socio-Economic Advantage (ICSEA) that has been most widely criticised.
Deputy Prime Minister, Ms Julia Gillard claims that the website enables parents to make informed choices about their children’s schooling. However, informed choices are near impossible, without significant effort. In the field of usability, we’d say that the website does not meet with the users’ expectations, in this case parents, when trying to compare schools.
Why have a website that lets you compare schools on an index that doesn’t make much sense to you or does not reflect the practical decision making process when it comes to choosing a school? Rather the government has decided to provide parents with comparison data and selection vehicle they feel comfortable with.
Searching for a school on the My School website
Naturally, parents will want to easily and quickly navigate the website. The My School website clearly prioritises a school search on its homepage. The only way in is by selecting a school from the list that appears. If you don’t select one but type in a name yourself, the site doesn’t work.
Usability best practice tells us, make sure people know exactly what they need to do before they do it. If this fails then the next way to help users proceed is to ensure error messaging is useful. The website doesn’t do this and this makes it even harder for parents. I thought, “Why can’t I just type in my postcode like Domain.com.au or Realestate.com.au and get a list of results presented? Or like 131500.com where a ‘did you mean’ question is used to pinpoint the address.” I guess the website really would rather you did not compare schools, geographically.
Comparing schools on the My School website
While the website’s limited search functionality has been the centre of media attention (for fear that schools will be inappropriately compared), parents are only human and will ultimately want to compare schools according to their own basket of schools. Checking out one school in isolation seems reasonable but for parents looking to the website to help them make an ‘informed choice’ for selecting a school for their child, their needs are overlooked completely.
Vast improvements could be made in comparing schools that are ‘statistically similar’. Most of the schools automatically shown in the search results are not even in the same state. A simple table would be able to show most of this data but the My School website lists only the names of the school and their performance so parents know nothing about the type of school that is performing better or worse, apart from that it’s ‘statistically similar’. And what does that really mean? For those interested in the definition of ‘statistically similar schools’ the site offers not one but two glossaries to explain this, adding further confusion.
What parents really want is to compare a collection of local schools or even better select a group of schools to compare between. Ideally, this comparison should also show more than just the ICSEA scores such as NAPLAN scores and facts about the school. Hoping to find this information on the local schools page proves to be a disappointment. There is no comparison data but only a simple list of local schools. Printing each school page to compare is unadvisable as well, every page prints with a large grey area at the end of it quickly using up valuable ink. An optimised print version via a printer icon on each page would enhance the site’s experience considerably.
Of course parents should be made aware and are clever enough to know that one school differs from another on many different factors but how else are parents going to shortlist schools and make an ‘informed choice’ without greater flexibility in the search function. It’s inevitable that new websites will emerge that will give parents greater flexibility based on the data provided by My School website.
With a ‘real life’ comparison missing, the comparison tables presented are purely there for information purposes. None of the comparison tables allow parents to manipulate the data, such as sort or filter, to make it easier to interrogate and engage with.
Some more general issues that would improve the user experience
It is safe to say legends on the website are necessary to understand the tables however finding them is another story. Serious scrolling is involved.
The colours sometimes fit so well with the visual design of the website that it isn’t always obvious what they actually represent. Perhaps it can be made more obvious. Especially white does not stand out at all.
The use of an arrow icon (generally signifying a link) as a design element in the heading further compromises the user experience. Replacing the phrase ‘selected school’ with a more informal ‘this school’ makes the data more accessible.
Users may feel the font is a bit on the small side and use the enlarge font button present on every page. A useful tool however surprisingly this does not cover the most important information on the page - the comparison tables! This is not a good result as the data is still too small! Equally it is impossible to see if the text can enlarge or decrease anymore unless you click the icon a few times and realise nothing happens. It’s as though the icons are on the page because someone said they had to be but no-one actually understood why they are there!
Perhaps it was imagined the website audience would simply look at the school data and ignore the rest. This is obvious when you look at the other pages. For instance, the Resources page shows a list of PDFs hiding valuable content within these. The About page does not say much about My School and could be bolstered with content from the ‘About the My School website’ PDFs on the Resources page.
Overall, the idea of the My School site is great but its execution leaves room for improvement. Let’s hope some of our suggestions are included in their next update.
