Application of thermal imaging camera in eye tracking evaluation

摘要

This paper presents a method for applying a thermal imaging camera to enhance eyetracking usability testing. The first part of the article introduces the eye tracking, one of the most popular usability evaluation method. Eyetracking records the position of participants' gaze on the screen with a dedicated camera. Eyetracking is a very efficient usability testing method. It allows determining which elements of user interface attract users' attention and which are not noticed by them. The second part of the article focuses on thermal imaging camera. Some theoretical background is provided on how such cameras work. Furthermore, paper contains instructions on how to conduct usability testing using eyetracker and the infrared camera, as well as a description of a case study - evaluation of SimplyTick web application. The proposed method allows researchers to enhance the standard eye tracking test with recording of thermal image of the participant's face, from which it is possible to recognize emotions during the course of the study. This enables us to obtain an extra measure of usability associated with emotions and user satisfaction.