User Experience for a Better World

Eye Insights: The Power of the Face

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 you want them to look next.

Here is a great example of someone using the face to alter the look patterns to subconsciously encourage people to look at the brand.

In this example, eye tracking shows that when the model looks at us, we look at the model; but, when the model looks at the product; our eyes are drawn to the product.

Another example of the power of the face

Baby looking straight-on:

Baby looking at text:

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Comment by Swapna Deshpande on March 30, 2009 at 9:41am: Good One. This has been a principle in advertising for many years but more and more of us have started bringing it into practice now... and hence making a good use of it. Good article and as Anthony said the images say it all.

Comment by Andrew Schall on March 25, 2009 at 10:04am: We use the Tobii T60 Eye-tracker with the latest version of the Tobii Studio software.

Comment by Bimal Desai on March 25, 2009 at 8:10am: what software / system's used for eye tracking?

Comment by James Breeze on March 16, 2009 at 5:59pm: Hi All,
I did my own bit of analysis on the baby images above with 106 people. Check out the heat maps here!
http://usableworld.com.au/2009/03/16/you-look-where-they-look/

Comment by Margoleath Berman on March 16, 2009 at 2:10pm: Check out this article on the HFI site from a November '03 newsletter...scroll down to "Face it, it depends". It's a fascinating topic. I often amuse myself looking at the "faces" on cars while driving to see how they correlate to a car's branding campaign (tough, friendly, sexy). Here's good link for more info: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27053487/.

Comment by James Breeze on February 25, 2009 at 4:09pm: Great post Andrew! I've used those baby pics in my demos of Tobii's eye trackers heaps. It is amazing the consistency of gaze reaction to faces that are side on or front on from people of all ages, genders and cultures.

Here's a video of my son looking at faces, he was 11 months old. he is mainly drawn to faces that are looking straight on, even his little car's face. Notice the increased dwell time on some images, he doesn't recognise them, hence more cognitive processing time is required.

Comment by Judy on February 25, 2009 at 11:22am: You get the point across well. This has me wondering how to best integrate it into my designs.

Comment by Warren Anthony on February 24, 2009 at 6:33pm: Also shows the power of images. You don't even need to read this article to get the point!