Empirically Based Design Guidelines for Gaze Interaction in Windows 7

204 Pages·2012·13.01 MB·English

by  Børge Rødsjø, Håkon Raudsandmoen

Empirically Based Design Guidelines for
Gaze Interaction in Windows 7
Børge Rødsjø
Håkon Raudsandmoen
Master of Science in Computer Science
Submission date: June 2012
Supervisor: Dag Svanæs, IDI
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Department of Computer and Information Science

i
Abstract
The purpose of this study has been to test the use of gaze interaction
in common everyday computer tasks, with the intent to suggest design
guidelines for gaze interaction in Microsoft Windows 7. This has been done
by organizing a user test with fifteen participants, using a self-made gaze
interactive software called Discovery and a Tobii X60 eye tracker.
FivedemoapplicationshavebeencreatedwithintheDiscovery software,
all utilizing gaze interaction. They are customized to reflect five user test
tasks; playingavideogame, exploringapicturegallery, doingdraganddrop
operations, browsing a web page and interacting with different Microsoft
Windows controls. The four types of controls tested are command buttons,
links, check boxes and sliders. Both quantitative and qualitative data were
gathered during the user test.
Through a discussion of the test results, we were able to suggest ten
specific design guidelines for gaze interaction. These covers both the tested
controls, drag and drop operations, automatic scrolling as well as the use
of head gestures. Additional findings indicate that gaze interaction is more
suitable for passive tasks such as reading with automatic scrolling, than
for more physical tasks like doing drag and drop operations. To support
gaze interaction, we found that current software will either require a major
redesign or to be used in a combination with other interaction styles.
Eye tracking technology has improved over the last years, becoming in-
creasingly affordable and accurate. Through this study we have seen that
gaze interaction has much to offer everyday computing. By recommend-
ing fundamental design guidelines we hope to aid software developers and
designers in the development of future gaze interactive systems.

iii
Sammendrag
Hensikten med denne oppgaven har vært ˚a teste bruken av blikkinterak-
sjon i kjente hverdagslige datamaskinoppgaver, med det form˚al ˚a foresl˚a
designretningslinjer for blikkinteraksjon in Microsoft Windows 7. Dette
har blitt gjort ved˚a organisere en brukertest med femten deltakere, bruke
en selvutviklet blikkinteraktiv programvare kalt Discovery og en Tobii X60
øyesporer.
Fem demoapplikasjoner har blitt laget i Discovery-programvaren, som
alle nyttiggjør seg av blikkinteraksjon. De er spesiallaget for ˚a gjenspeile
fem brukertestoppgaver; spille et spill, utforske et bildegalleri, gjøre dra-
og-slipp-operasjoner, lese en nettside, samt ˚a interagere med forskjellige
Microsoft Windows kontrollere. De fire kontrollerne som ble testet var
knapper, lenker, avkrysningsbokser og glidebrytere. B˚ade kvantitative og
kvalitative data ble samlet inn under brukertesten.
En diskusjon av testresultatene gjorde det mulig˚a foresl˚a ti spesifikke
designretningslinjer for blikkinteraksjon. Disse dekker b˚ade de testede kon-
trollerne, bruk av hodebevegelser, dra-og-slipp-operasjoner og automatisk
scrolling. Ytterligere funn indikerer at blikkinteraksjon er bedre egnet for
passive oppgaver slik som˚a lese med automatisk scrolling, enn for mer fy-
siskeoppgaversliksom˚agjøredraogslippoperasjoner. For˚astøtteblikkin-
teraksjon ser vi at dagens programvare vil enten trenge store endringer i sitt
design, eller bli brukt sammen med en annen interaksjonstype.
Øyesporingsteknologi har forbedret seg de siste ˚arene, blitt rimeligere
og mer presis. Gjennom denne oppgaven har vi sett at blikkinteraksjon
har mye ˚a tilby vanlig bruk av datamaskiner. Ved ˚a forels˚a fundamen-
tale designretningslinjer h˚aper vi ˚a kunne hjelpe programvareutviklere og
designere i utviklingen av fremtidens blikkinteraktive systemer.

v
Preface
This report is a result of the work done the last semester of the Computer
Science Master Study at the Department of Computer and Information
Science (IDI) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in
Trondheim. In addition to the report, the prototype source code uploaded
in DAIM is a part of this master’s thesis.
We would like to thank our supervisor Dag Svanæs, Professor at IDI, for
his guidance throughout our work the spring of 2012. As an expert in the
HCI field, he has been an important resource in our research. We would
also like to thank Terje Røsand, Senior Engineer at IDI and the Norwegian
EHR Research Center (NSEP), for technical assistance in the usability lab.
At last we would like to thank all system testers and user test participants
that has been involved in this project, whose contributions were essential
for our research.
H˚akon Raudsandmoen and Børge Rødsjø
Trondheim, June 15, 2012

Contents
Contents vii
List of Figures xi
List of Tables xvii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Research Goal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3 Research Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4 Report Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2 Background 9
2.1 Eye Tracking History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 Eye Tracking Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3 Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines . . . . . . 19
2.4 User Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3 Prototype 29
3.1 Prototype Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.2 Discovery Version 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.3 The Calibration Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.4 The UFO Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.5 The Picture Gallery Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.6 The Drag and Drop Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.7 The Browser Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.8 The Controls Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4 Method 63
4.1 Method Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
4.2 Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.3 Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
vii
viii CONTENTS
4.4 Test Facility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.5 Test Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.6 Data Gathering Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.7 Test Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.8 Test Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.9 From Test Results to Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
5 Results 91
5.1 Task 1 - Playing a Video Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
5.2 Task 2 - Exploring a Picture Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.3 Task 3 - Doing Drag and Drop Operations . . . . . . . . . . 96
5.4 Task 4 - Browsing a Web Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.5 Task 5 - Interaction With Different Controls . . . . . . . . . 103
6 Discussion 115
6.1 Task 1 - Playing a Video Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
6.2 Task 2 - Exploring a Picture Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
6.3 Task 3 - Doing Drag and Drop Operations . . . . . . . . . . 120
6.4 Task 4 - Browsing a Web Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
6.5 Task 5 - Interaction With Different Controls . . . . . . . . . 127
6.6 Other Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
6.7 Method Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
6.8 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
7 Conclusion 145
7.1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
7.2 Further Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Bibliography 151
A The Binomial Proportion Confidence Interval 155
A.1 The Binomial Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
A.2 Proportion Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
A.3 The Binomial Proportion Confidence Interval . . . . . . . . 156
B Test Plan 159
B.1 Test Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
B.2 Purpose of the User Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
B.3 System used in the Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
B.4 Functionality that will be Tested . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
B.5 Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
B.6 Test Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161