ECS Transactions

Role of Eye Tracking in Human Computer Interaction

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 ECS Transactions, 107 (1) 8211-8218 (2022)
10.1149/10701.8211ecst ©The Electrochemical Society

Role of Eye Tracking in Human Computer Interaction

Nandini Modi and Jaiteg Singh
Chitkara University Institute of Engineering and Technology, Chitkara University, Punjab, India
nandini.modi@chitkara.edu.in, jaiteg.singh@chitkara.edu.in

With the invention of computers arises the need of an interface for

users and interacting with a computer has become a natural
practice. For all the opportunities a machine can bring, it is now a
limiting factor for humans and their interaction with machines.
This has given rise to a significant amount of research in the area
of human computer interaction to make it more intuitive, simpler
and efficient. Human interaction with computers is no longer
confined to printers and keyboards. Traditional input devices give
way to natural inputs like voice, gestures and visual computing
using eye tracking. This paper provides useful insights in
understanding the use of eye gaze tracking technology for human-
machine interaction. A case study was conducted with 15
participants to analyze eye movements on educational website.
Visual attention was measured using eye gaze fixations data and
heat maps were utilized to illustrate the results.

Keywords: human computer interaction, affective computing, ubiquitous computing, eye

tracking, human-machine interaction, gaze applications

1. Introduction

With the rapid advancement in technology and development of information systems,

human-computer interaction (HCI) has been actively investigated, with the goal of
designing an interface for communication with disabled and with ergonomic properties.
The means by which humans connect with computers have progressed significantly. The
journey continues, with new designs of technologies and systems appearing every day,
and research in this area has grown significantly in recent decades. The discipline of HCI
has grown not only in terms of quality of interaction, but also in terms of branching over
its history (1, 2). Instead of building standard interfaces, many research fields have
focused on multimodality rather than unimodality, intelligent adaptive interfaces rather
than command/action-based interfaces, and lastly active rather than passive interaction. In
automated devices, HCI systems have been used from a very long time where users have
relied on the standard input using keyboard, monitor and mouse. Nonetheless, many
physically challenged people in the real world are still unable to use these equipments or
services. People suffering from autism disorders, paralysis and those who are unable to
communicate with their hands and feet depends upon others for their daily necessities. To
improve the living standards for people with disabilities, HCI interface solutions
independent of using hands and feet are required to serve people with disabilities.
However, communication using this manual input was inconvenient for disabled, and in

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order to solve this problem, gesture based interfaces have been proposed by the research
community (3).
Nowadays, different types of interaction devices are utilized such as pointing devices,
high-resolution displays, microphones, touch-sensitive surfaces and speakers. Some new
modalities are available for interaction with computers like input by gestures, speech
interaction or by tangible objects with sensors (4, 5). Verbal and nonverbal inputs like
speech and gesture has been adequately explored by researchers to be used as input for
computing and feedback for making decisions (6,7). Gesture driven input methods
requires movement of the body such as head and hands for communication for example
sign language for deaf, gaming applications and to unlock smartphones. However, the use
of gestures performed with fingers became widespread with the advent of the iPhone and
related devices, which have a touch sensitive surface as the only input modality.
With the advent of ubiquitous computing, it is not difficult to imagine, that in near
future the input sensing for computing will run in background in our everyday life. It may
entirely change the outlook of existing computing devices. Ubiquitous computing has
increased the requirement of an interaction technique that does not cause any physical
problem when interacting with computers (8). Affective computing is development of
ideas and technologies that increase human affect understanding, taking cognition and
emotion into account in the design of associated technologies to meet human
requirements, and thus gaining attention (9). Based upon different modalities, interface
used for communication can be categorized into three types i.e. audio, sensory and visual
based communication as mentioned in Figure 1 below.

Mouse Facial expressions

Sensory

Visual
Audio

Keyboard Speech recognition Movement tracking

Joystick Auditory emotion Gesture recognition
Motion tracking analysis Eye gaze tracking
sensors

Figure 1. Different types of interface modes for communication with machines

With the development of different tools and technologies, visual communication for
interaction with machines has grown in popularity. Facial expression analysis is
concerned with the visual identification of emotions (10). Gesture recognition and body
movement tracking are the main emphasis of this area and can serve a variety of
functions, although they are most commonly employed for direct human-computer
interaction in a command-and-control scenario (11). Eye gaze detection is a type of
indirect human-machine interaction that is usually used to better comprehend the user's
attention, focus or purpose in context-sensitive circumstances. Eye gaze tracking (EGT)
is the process of measuring eye activity. It is primarily done to estimate the focus of
attention of an individual (12, 13). The integration of user’s gaze with a computer
application could potentially contribute towards understanding human computer
interaction, target tracking and in diagnosis of eye diseases (14–16). This paper provides

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useful insights in utilizing EGT technique for developing human computer interface (17,
18). As users have limited ability to recollect for how long and what they have paid
attention. These limitations of getting user’s visual behavior can be removed using eye
gaze tracking technology (19, 20). In this paper, we have used EGT technique to identify
the visual attention of users on educational website. We will investigate, which sections
on webpage attracts maximum attention. In this experiment, the data has been collected
from participants with eye gaze tracking device using ordinary camera. The procedure
followed to analyze gaze behavior on web interface is detailed in subsequent sections.

2. Related Studies
There exist studies where data is collected from users on webpages through traditional
techniques such as questionnaires and surveys (21). However, the subjectivity of these
techniques leads to biasness and errors in decision making, thus alternate methodologies
like eye gaze tracking has been used to reduce biasness and difficulties in collecting
users’ data. The users’ visual data collected by EGT technology is more objective and is
less prone to bias. EGT has been used by many studies in monitoring cognitive effort and
to investigate users focus of attention (22, 23). The major objective of this work is to
identify which components pique the user's interest on educational website by analyzing
visualization patterns and determining where exactly user's attention is focused on a
particular section of webpage. Summary of work done by researchers on webpages is
mentioned in Table 1 below.
TABLE I. Summary of studies utilizing several techniques in analyzing user behavior on websites
Study Summary Technique used Data visualization
Survey Eye gaze Statistical visual
tracking analysis analysis
(heat
map)
(24) Objective: The aim is to determine the    
impact of user behavior on e-commerce
websites
Limitation: the results were represented
using statistical analysis, representation
using heat map gives more clearer
overview of visual attention
(25) Objective: studied the impact of student    
satisfaction, motivation on websites from
perspective of internet literacy.
Limitation: study was limited to single did
not consider the influence of website
design on user behavior.

(26) Objective: The study examined the    

interaction effect of system and
information quality on customers’
satisfaction
Limitation: Did not consider influence of
other attributes such as platform used, text
filters, images etc. in customers’ decision
making.

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(27) Objective: Studied the impact of design on    

user behavior
Limitation: Did not consider the sequence
of visual attention and other attributes on
stimuli under investigation
This Objective: studied the impact of website    
study layout and design on user behavior

It is evident from Table 1 that EGT technology has not been widely applied in
educational research. The information gathered from the participants was obtained
through self-reports or surveys. However, because these approaches are subjective, they
might lead to inaccuracies or biases, prompting the use of alternative technologies such as
eye gaze monitoring. Visual fixations on certain locations or points of interest on a web
page can be captured and analysed using EGT technology. Furthermore, the majority of
studies have focused on analysing customers' visual attention using either statistical
analysis or visual analysis. No previous research has looked into the use of visual analysis
for representing gaze fixations data of users.

3. Methodology
The purpose of this work is to analyze gaze behavior of users using non-invasive
technique which is user friendly and is easily accessible to users using ordinary camera.
The proposed eye gaze tracking system consists of a collection of independent modules
that recognize faces and eyes, calculate pupil center and plot gaze patterns. As input to
the system, a webcam stream from a low-cost camera connected to the computer is
required. The pupil canters are then approximated using gradient descent once the input
feed has been evaluated and ultimately generating a reference point to detect gaze. The
procedure followed to achieve this is detailed in subsequent sections.

Experiment Setup

The EGT experiment was performed in controlled environment. The eye movements
of the participants were collected and recorded while stimulus screen is shown to them. A
14-inch screen with 1366x768 pixels resolution was used for this experiment. The pupil
center and eye movements are used to locate the gaze coordinates on the screen using
ordinary web camera. Using this setup, the horizontal and vertical angle of vision was
calculated for each participant. The task was assigned to the participants where the
homepage screen of University website was shown and participants were instructed to
explore the website. While the participants were watching the stimuli, the visual
distribution of the participants was recorded in order to identify prominent regions or
sections of interest.
Data Collection

A total of 15 participants were recruited through mail. All the participants were
graduate and post graduate students at the Institute between 18-25 years of age. To train
the system for estimating eye gaze, the participants were instructed to focus at the center
of screen. During data collection phase, each subject is asked to focus at the center of the

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screen for calibration procedure. This is repeated for 15 subjects out of which 9 are male
and 6 are female. During data collection, subjects sit in front of the screen so that the
front part of face is been focused by the camera.

4. Results

The gaze fixations of all participants were calculated and shown as heat maps. Heat Maps
is a graphical representation of gaze data on screen. Heat maps are useful in designing
web pages in order to understand the behavior of visitors who visits the webpage. Heat
maps works by collecting gaze data based upon the fixations and in turn displays the data
in the form of colors on webpage. UI/UX and graphic designers generally use heat maps
to redesign their webpages based upon the customer feedback in the form of heatmap
visualization of colors. Heat map results on the webpage of Chitkara University is shown
in Figure 2. Though the experiment was done on University webpage, yet to avoid any
possible copyright infringement a custom webpage akin to original website was
developed to plot experimental results. Using heat maps, helps us in estimating the most
focused areas of webpage giving an indication of important i.e. most viewed objects. In
Figure 2, more bright colors i.e. yellow and red color represents most focused or viewed
areas of webpage whereas light colors represent less focused areas.

Figure 2. Heat map visualization of gaze data of user

From this heatmap, it can be concluded that users view top left and left sides of
webpage as per the output generated using webcam. In other words, we can say that most
of the users have focused more visual attention on the logo of Chitkara University. Heat
maps gives qualitative analysis of eye gaze data, which provides the most frequently
viewed and least viewed elements of a webpage. Some gaze fixations were also noticed

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on the poster image carried by students representing University’s logo on webpage. These
findings could assist web designers better understand how information is placed on a
webpage, as well as the elements that contribute to lower fixation counts in webpage
designs.

5. Conclusion and Future directions

This paper concludes to the fact that interaction with machines could be done using
numerous technologies i.e. unimodal techniques such as EGT and multimodal. With the
expanding number of computer devices around us, we have utilized new interaction
methods i.e. EGT that makes computers easier to use or boost interaction efficiency. To
achieve this purpose, eye tracking appears to be a promising technology. The main
contribution of this paper is a low cost camera-based non-intrusive eye gaze estimation
technique for interaction with machines. The method is reliable enough to perform well
in real time situations. The methodology used here can be utilized to evaluate different
interface designs like web page designing, marketing, education etc. using ordinary
camera to analyze consumers’ visual attention on websites. The study also concludes the
fact that, inducting EGT with state of art augmented and virtual reality, gaming,
Medicare, artificial intelligence, sports, social analytics, user learning, entertainment and
Internet of Things has opened numerous new horizons for EGT research. So the future
study should focus on use of these applications using cost effective EGT solutions. In
terms of practical applications, these findings can help web designers in a variety of ways
to test more internet pages, such as internet webpages to provide more broad indicators of
website quality.

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