Improving User Experience of Eye Tracking-Based Interaction: Introspecting and Adapting Interfaces

Eye tracking systems have greatly improved in recent years, being a viable and affordable option as digital communication channel, especially for people lacking fine motor skills. Using eye tracking as an input method is challenging due to accuracy and ambiguity issues, and therefore research in eye gaze interaction is mainly focused on better pointing and typing methods. However, these methods eventually need to be assimilated to enable users to control application interfaces. A common approach to employ eye tracking for controlling application interfaces is to emulate mouse and keyboard functionality. We argue that the emulation approach incurs unnecessary interaction and visual overhead for users, aggravating the entire experience of gaze-based computer access. We discuss how the knowledge about the interface semantics can help reducing the interaction and visual overhead to improve the user experience. Thus, we propose the efficient introspection of interfaces to retrieve the interface semantics and adapt the interaction with eye gaze. We have developed a Web browser, GazeTheWeb, that introspects Web page interfaces and adapts both the browser interface and the interaction elements on Web pages for gaze input. In a summative lab study with 20 participants, GazeTheWeb allowed the participants to accomplish information search and browsing tasks significantly faster than an emulation approach. Additional feasibility tests of GazeTheWeb in lab and home environment showcase its effectiveness in accomplishing daily Web browsing activities and adapting large variety of modern Web pages to suffice the interaction for people with motor impairment.