Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Case Study
Equipment
For the case study, an eye-tracking device was used. As Ooms et al. (
2014
) states,
eye-tracking is a direct method to study users
cognitive processes. Eye-tracker is
situated in the special room—eye-tracking laboratory. Windows are covered with
non transparent foil, to unify the lighting conditions.
SMI RED 250 eye-tracker was used within the study. This device is capable of
recording eye-movements with the frequency of 120 Hz. Eye positions are recorded
every 8 ms. Eye-tracker is supplemented by web camera, which records participant
during the experiment. This video helps to reveal the cause of missing data,
respondents
'
reactions to the stimuli and their comments to the particular maps.
For data visualization and analyses, three different applications were used. First
one is SMI BeGaze, which is software developed by the manufacturer of the device.
Open source software OGAMA and CommonGIS developed at Fraunhofer Institute
in Germany were used for visual analytics of eye-tracking data.
'
Participants
Total of 40 participants (24 females, 16 males) attended the eye-tracking experi-
ment. Most of them were representatives of academic staff and students. Respon-
dents were originated from different fields. Some of them were cartographers, some
of them were not. Majority of participants were 20-25 years old. Participants were
not paid for the testing.
Before the experiment, respondents filled out the short questionnaire with
personal information. Apart from elementary information, like age or sex, they
had to answer the question, how often are they using the internet map portals like
Google Maps or OpenStreetMap. Most of the participants use the web map portals
every day.
Experiment Design
At the beginning of the experiment, respondents fill out a short questionnaire. Then,
the 9-point calibration was performed. Eye-movement recordings with deviation
smaller than 1
were included in the experiment.
After the calibration, welcome screen with instructions was displayed. The
instructions included also the sample question. Respondents
task was to find out
one particular point symbol in the map as fast as possible and mark it with the
mouse click.
'
