iPhone 6 Eye Tracking and the FOVIO Eye Tracker

iPhone 6

Scene Camera Data Collection – Mobile / Tablet Example

Testing on a monitor, testing with a projector, testing on a laptop, a Command and Control Station, a TV… the list goes on. Where ever a person meets machine, there is a way that eye tracking can be employed. As new interfaces and devices are released, eye tracking must evolve to ensure that it can be used easily with those devices.

The latest such device was released yesterday, and that’s when mine turned up in the mail – I am of course referring to the much anticipated iPhone 6. Here at EyeTracking, we have many customers that use our EyeWorks software to test mobile apps on a variety of devices. We ourselves, run usability services (using EyeWorks or course), for a range of companies testing mobile apps. As we had an iPhone 6 in hand, we thought we should perform a quick test to ensure that all is working well between EyeWorks and the latest top end phone on the market.  

For those that have not used the EyeWorks Scene Camera Module yet, it is the most easy to use and powerful scene camera solution on the market. We will get more into this in a future blog. Just to make things more interesting, we decided to use the newest eye tracker on the market –the much talked about FOVIO system from Seeing Machines. The first production system of FOVIO only started shipping to the research community this week too, so it seemed only too fitting to use it for this test.

Setup took around about 3 minutes, and we recorded simultaneous and synchronized high-definition videos of the iPhone 6 screen and Picture-in-Picture view of the subject’s hands. There is no geometry configuration needed, just click start, calibrate four points and everything else is running.

Click the embedded clip below to view the raw unedited video from our test. We’ll be sure to post more in the near future, so be sure to check back often and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Contact our sales team if you are interested in learning more about EyeWorks or any of our other products and services.

Featured image from Unsplash.

‘iTrack’ That App!

iTrack

How many times each day do you use an app on your smart phone? once? twice? dozens? Most of us use apps almost without thinking—they have become a part of the way we work and play. You are no doubt very aware of how apps are changing how you travel (buy a ticket, check in, reserve a car, find the nearest coffee, get a weather report and on and on). And there’s a visible impact on our shopping, with apps for all the major online shopping sites becoming more and more popular.

At latest count, there are at least 700,000 apps EACH for iPhones and Android smart phones. That’s a lot of apps. Just as you might expect, some are good and some aren’t. Remember about 10-15 years ago when everyone rushed to build a website? Some worked, some didn’t. We’re going through the same thing with apps right now.

Apps that don’t deliver what the consumers want are quickly abandoned. One thing to keep in mind is that people don’t necessarily use smart phones in the same ways they use a full size keyboard and monitor or even as they use a tablet. Building an app that mimics too closely how people interact with a traditional website may be a mistake. Each display option has its own advantages, and app developers need to recognize and take advantage of particular platform features.

What does eye tracking have to do with all this? Just as savvy commercial entities routinely carry out usability studies on their ecommerce websites, they are now beginning to do similar studies on their smart phone apps. The only way you are going to find out if your customers see the major features on your app is to follow their eyes as they use it. Users’ interactions with a smart phone app are far quicker than their interactions with a traditional computer website. It takes only a fraction of a second for your users to scan the phone display and move on. Do you know what they saw? Are your navigation features clear and visible even when the user is swiping or scrolling? The real estate on a smart phone is valuable—you can’t afford to waste any of it. And, time is precious—milliseconds matter, because transactions take at most a few seconds. Usability testing can improve the way your app functions and make it more valuable for you and your customers.

Featured image from Unsplash.