Essentials of Eye Tracking on Mobile Devices

User experience testing on the burgeoning smart phone and tablet platforms is a recent development and eye tracking of mobile devices is at the cutting edge of UX. The usability of interfaces and applications on desktop computers has been successfully investigated for years. Handheld and mobile devices, however, present unique challenges because of their physicality and diversity of usage scenarios from the coffee shop to the subway.

When eye tracking is thrown into the mix, the researcher has even more factors to be attentive to. In addition to recruitment and stimulus design, data capture and analysis take on a whole new wrinkle with different eye tracking systems providing different interaction and measurement capabilities. This presentation seeks to provide a primer on mobile device testing especially with respect to approaches to eye tracking. We will raise key considerations that user experience researchers will want to keep in mind as well as important questions which can guide the selection of effective test technologies.