Eyepoint: Practical Pointing and Selection Using Gaze and Keyboard

Comments

Drew

Manoj

Summary

The authors of this paper seek to create an alternative to mouse and keyboard based interaction. It uses eye gaze tracking technology instead of the mouse.

They did an inquiry into how able bodied users use the mouse. They discovered several things in common when using the mouse

1. use the mouse to click on links on a webpage
2. launching applications from the desktop or start menu
3. navigating through folders
4. minimizing, maximizing, and closing applications
5. moving windows
6. positioning the cursor when editing text
7. opening context sensitive menus
8. hovering over buttons/regions to activate tooltips

They determined that any good gaze based pointing techniques must have single click, double click, right click, mouse-over, and click-and-drag capabilities.

EyePoint uses a two-step progressive refinement process stitched together in a "look-press-look-release" action. It requires a one time calibration. The user will look at the desired point on the screen and press a hotkey for the desired action. EyePoint will then zoom in and the user will look at the target again and release the hotkey.

They tested EyePoint on 20 subjects that were experienced computer users. 6 of the users needed vision correction either through glasses or contact lens. They evaluated 3 variants of EyePoint: with focus points, with gaze marker, and without focus points. The first study was to click on a hyperlink highlighted in orange on a webpage. Next, the test subjects had to click on a red balloon, which moves everytime it was clicked. Lastly, they would have to click a target and then type a word.

In the first study, users took 300 milliseconds longer using EyePoint than the mouse (1915 to 1576). EyePoint had an error rate of 13% vs the mouse's 3%. In the second study, EyePoint was about 100 ms slower than the mouse. In the last study, EyePoint was faster than the mouse. Overall, it was determined that EyePoint might have better performance, it was more prone to errors. Also, users were split on whether the mouse or EyePoint were easier to use or faster.

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I think this is a good technique to use for people who have trouble using the mouse due to some physical injury (ie broken hand). EyePoint also seems to use a much more accurate eye tracking software than the other eye tracking papers we've read. Also, I like the tie in with fitz's law and the book Emotional Design which I have read before.

However, one area of improvement would be to allow the program to be more usable when dealing with glasses, especially the narrow frames which had caused problems