Official Google Blog: Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye
Imagine that you need a refresher on how to tie a tie. So, you decide to type [how to tie a tie] into the Google search box. Which of these results would you choose?Where did your eyes go first when you saw the results page? Did they go directly to the title of the first result? Did you first check the terms in boldface to see if the results really talk about tying a tie? Or maybe the images captured your attention and drew your eyes to them?You might find it difficult to answer these questions. You probably did not pay attention to where you were looking on the page and you most likely only used a few seconds to visually scan the results. Our User Experience Research team has found that people evaluate the search results page so quickly that they make most of their decisions unconsciously. To help us get some insight into this split-second decision-making process, we use eye-tracking equipment in our usability labs. This lets us see how our study participants scan the search results page, and is the next best thing to actually being able to read their minds. Of course, eye-tracking does not really tell us what they are thinking, but it gives us a good idea of which parts of the page they are thinking about.To see what the eye-tracking data we collect looks like, let's go back to the results page we got for the query [how to tie a tie]. The following video clip shows in real time how a participant in our study scanned the page. And yes, seriously — the video is in real time! That's how fast the eyes move when scanning a page. The larger the dot gets, the longer the users' eye pauses looking at that specific location.
More about this: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/eye-tracking-studies-more-than-meets.html
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
wonderful piece of information, I had come to know about your blog from my friend Nandu , Hyderabad, I have read at least 7 posts of yours by now, and let me tell you, your website gives the best and the most interesting information. This is just the kind of information that I had been looking for, I'm already your RSS reader now and I would regularly watch out for the new posts, once again hats off to you! Thanks a ton once again, Regards, how to tie a tie
ReplyDeleteI find this kind of research very interesting so will take a look at the studies detailed here. Thanks for compiling the resource! Bookmarked :)
ReplyDelete