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2. Eye tracking can be a significant benefit in many kinds of usability tests.
The technology continues to improve, becoming more accurate, easier
to use, and less intrusive. The value is being able to compare the effec-
tiveness of different designs, as well as calculate metrics based on areas
of interest. Key metrics include dwell time, time to first fixation, and hit
ratio. There are many ways to visualize results from eye tracking, such as
heat maps and gridded AOIs.
3. There are three ways to measure emotions: skin conductance, facial expres-
sions, and EEG. Skin conductance measures level of arousal, facial expres-
sions are classified and associated with six basic emotions, and EEG
measures brain wave activity with unique signatures tied to specific emo-
tional responses. There are new technologies based on each approach that
even integrate eye movement data into their applications. These are power-
ful new tools used to gain insight into the emotional response of the user.
4. Stress is an important component of the user experience. It is measured
most often as heart rate variance. New apps allow the researcher to cal-
culate HRV very easily. However, there are many factors that impact
stress beyond the user experience.
5. Other techniques for capturing information about the participant's
behavior, such as a mouse that registers how tightly it is being gripped,
are on the horizon and may become useful additions to the battery of
tools available for use in usability testing.
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