Eye Tracking Research & Application

Yoshiko Habuchi, Haruhiko Takeuchi, Muneo Kitajima
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)

1 Introduction

The World Wide Web has become an important source of
information, as much as traditional media like books, newspapers,
and television. While there have been many studies on Web
searching, research into Web-viewing behavior using eye-tracking
systems has only recently begun [Pan et al., 2004]. Josephson and
Holmes [2002] studied Web-viewing behavior focusing on the
category of Web page visual design. They suggested that eye
movements were affected by the following two factors: (1) visual
design of Web pages and (2) habitually preferred path across the
visual stimuli. However, these previous studies did not
sufficiently consider the user’s experience. The purpose of this
study is to investigate how past Web-browsing experience
influences Web-viewing behavior. We used a detailed
questionnaire to measure a user’s Web-browsing experience and
analyzed the eye-tracking data based on the user’s prior Web
experience.

2 Method

Four Internet users were recruited based on their Internet usage.
While they all used the Internet every day in their work, they
differed in terms of Web-browsing style. They were divided into
two groups, A and B, based on their Internet usage styles. Group A
consisted of comparatively heavy Internet users who browse and
use various portal sites. Group B consisted of comparatively
conservative users who use a regular portal site for fixed purposes.
The experiment consisted of two phases, observation and
recognition. In the observation phase, participants focused on
evaluation tasks. They were instructed to look at the Web pages
carefully and evaluate the usability of those pages. Participants
viewed 15 Web pages in three categories: Portal, News, and
Advertisement. After the observation phase, participants filled out
an Internet-usage questionnaire. In the recognition phase,
participants were asked to observe 30 Web pages including the
previous 15 pages and to determine if they had seen these pages in
the previous phase. Eye movement data were collected using an
eye-tracking system (Tobii Technology) during the experiment.
Each Web page was presented for 20 seconds during the
observation phase, and for 5 seconds in the recognition phase.



3 Results

The contents area of each web page was classified into six
functions based on Nielsen & Tahir [2002]. Table 1 presents the
mean percentage of gaze frequency in each condition. A framed
rectangle indicates the highest score within the specific condition.
The results indicated distinctive differences in Web-viewing
behavior between user groups. At the Portal page, Group A
exhibited consistent viewing behavior between the observation
and recognition phases. In contrast, Group B exhibited
inconsistent viewing behavior. At the News page, both groups
demonstrated consistent viewing behavior between observation
and recognition phases. At the Advertisement page, both groups
exhibited an instable viewing-behavior pattern because they
seldom browse advertisement pages. These results suggest that
prior Web-browsing experiences form an individual’s efficient
tracking method or mental model of how to view a Web site to get
information.

References

JOSEPHSON, S., AND HOLMES, M. 2002. Attention to
repeated images on the World-Wide Web: Another look at
scanpath theory. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, &
Computers, 34, 539-548.

NIELSEN, J., AND TAHIR, M. 2002. Homepage usability 50
Websites deconstructed. Indianapolis: New Riders Publishing.

PAN, B. et al. 2004. The determinants of Web page viewing
behavior: An eye-tracking study. In Eye Tracking Research &
Applications (ETRA) Symposium, ACM, 147-154.

Copyright (C) 2006 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.