Cowen, Laura and Ball, Linden J. and Delin, Judy (2002) An Eye Movement Analysis of Webpage Usability. In: People and Computers XVI - Memorable yet Invisible: Proceedings of the HCI 2002 :. Springer-Verlag Ltd., London.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
An experiment is reported that investigated the application of eye movement analysis in the evaluation of webpage usability. Participants completed two tasks on each of four website homepages. Eye movements and performance data (Response Scores and Task Completion Times) were recorded. Analyses of performance data provided reliable evidence for a variety of Page and Task effects, including a Page by Task interaction. Four eye movement measures (Average Fixation Duration, Number of Fixations, Spatial Density of Fixations, and Total Fixation Duration) were also analysed statistically, and were found to be sensitive to similar patterns of difference between Pages and Tasks that were evident in the performance data, including the Page by Task interaction. However, this interaction failed to emerge as a significant effect (although the main effects of Page and Task did). We discuss possible reasons for the nonsignificance of the interaction, and propose that for eye movement analysis to be maximally useful in interface-evaluation studies, the method needs to be refined to accommodate the temporal and dynamic aspects of interface use, such as the stage of task processing that is being engaged in.