Andrew Schall's Page

How many participants do you need? This is one of the most frequent questions that I get when asked about eye-tracking. I find that the best way to explain it is to present a series of heatmaps generated from eye-tracking.



Let's look at a random sample of 3 different groups each composed of 8 people:

As you can see,… Continue

Eye tracking is a great tool to help us understand what happens in what I call the breakdown event. The breakdown event is something that goes wrong during a usability test during task completion.



In this example, participants were asked to complete a form to sign up for a new service. During the sign up process, we noticed that several participants were skipping a critical field necessary to completing the sign up… Continue

We have learned through eye tracking that the image of the human face is a powerful thing. The eye is naturally drawn to the face, and we often spend several moments looking at it.



If you use faces in your design, be strategic in how you use them. Use the power of the face to draw the eye to the area of the page that you want them to focus on and then make sure that it leads them to where… Continue

Not everyone can afford eye-tracking for every project. So, is there anything that can be learned about the effectiveness of your visual design without the expense of using an eye-tracker?



Every web site design has a “visual hierarchy”, whether intentionally created or purely by accident. Visual hierarchy refers to the order in which the elements on a page are viewed. While eye-tracking can provide concrete data about how your users view your site, there are a variety of low-tech… Continue