Content aware approach for web application usability testing using eye tracking hardware

Eye tracking technology provides eye movement details by tracking movements of pupil of the eye. Eye tracking devices use infrared sensors and specialized cameras to track movements of the pupil. This technology is developed with the development of lens and camera technologies. Currently eye tracking technologies are actively used in advertisement, sales, marketing etc. With the help of this technology human behaviours are determined and required actions are taken according to research area. Web application usability testing is another area that eye tracking technology can be used. Purpose of this test is to determine how efficient and effective is the web application used and also to determine how pleasured the users are. According to the results of the test, improvements may be applied to the application to increase the usability of the application. Web usability testing using eye tracking technology might be a compelling process. First of all, convenient laboratory envorinment is required. Then participants need to attend this laboratory for measurement processes. After the measurement processes the researcher needs to evaluate the results in person. This process may cause losing serious amount of time and losing focus on the research. Besides these possible effects, most of the time researcher does not have any information about content of the application. Lack of content information may end up with common evaluations. Openness to the human error is also another gap for web usability testing using eye tracking technologies. These possible problems and deficiencies form the basis of this research. With this research a content aware approach for web application usability testing is provided. Using this approach, experimental studies are made to verify the approach. Results of the studies showed that with this approach whole process will take less time than before. Measurement process will be easier to apply and easy to evaluate results. Evaluation process will be more human error prone. Besides all of these gains, work load of researcher will be reduced significantly, and researcher will have chance to focus at his/her research.