Department of Geography, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Behav Res Methods. 2015 Dec;47(4):977-993. doi: 10.3758/s13428-014-0542-3.
User evaluations of interactive and dynamic applications face various challenges related to the active nature of these displays. For example, users can often zoom and pan on digital products, and these interactions cause changes in the extent and/or level of detail of the stimulus. Therefore, in eye tracking studies, when a user's gaze is at a particular screen position (gaze position) over a period of time, the information contained in this particular position may have changed. Such digital activities are commonplace in modern life, yet it has been difficult to automatically compare the changing information at the viewed position, especially across many participants. Existing solutions typically involve tedious and time-consuming manual work. In this article, we propose a methodology that can overcome this problem. By combining eye tracking with user logging (mouse and keyboard actions) with cartographic products, we are able to accurately reference screen coordinates to geographic coordinates. This referencing approach allows researchers to know which geographic object (location or attribute) corresponds to the gaze coordinates at all times. We tested the proposed approach through two case studies, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the applied methodology. Furthermore, the applicability of the proposed approach is discussed with respect to other fields of research that use eye tracking-namely, marketing, sports and movement sciences, and experimental psychology. From these case studies and discussions, we conclude that combining eye tracking and user-logging data is an essential step forward in efficiently studying user behavior with interactive and static stimuli in multiple research fields.
用户对交互式和动态应用程序的评价面临着与这些显示的主动性质相关的各种挑战。例如，用户通常可以在数字产品上缩放和平移，这些交互会导致刺激的范围和/或细节水平发生变化。因此，在眼动追踪研究中，当用户的注视在一段时间内在特定屏幕位置（注视位置）时，该特定位置包含的信息可能已经发生了变化。这种数字活动在现代生活中很常见，但很难自动比较所查看位置的变化信息，特别是在许多参与者之间。现有的解决方案通常涉及繁琐且耗时的手动工作。在本文中，我们提出了一种可以克服此问题的方法。通过将眼动追踪与用户日志记录（鼠标和键盘操作）与制图产品相结合，我们能够将屏幕坐标准确地参考到地理坐标。这种参考方法使研究人员始终能够知道注视坐标对应于哪个地理对象（位置或属性）。我们通过两个案例研究对提出的方法进行了测试，并讨论了所应用方法的优缺点。此外，还讨论了该方法在使用眼动追踪的其他研究领域（即营销、运动和运动科学以及实验心理学）中的适用性。从这些案例研究和讨论中，我们得出结论，将眼动追踪和用户日志记录数据相结合是在多个研究领域中有效研究具有交互式和静态刺激的用户行为的重要一步。
