gaze vs. mouse in games: the effects on user experience tersia //gowases, roman bednarik, markku...

Gaze vs. Mouse in Games: The Effects on User Experience

Tersia //Gowases, Roman Bednarik, Markku Tukiainen

Department of Computer Science and Statistics

University of Joensuu

Finland

Eye-movement tracking technique Rests on eye-mind hypothesis

Visual attention is linked to the location of the attended region

Eye-tracker reports a stream of saccades and fixations

Fixation duration is thought to be related to the depth of required processing.

Fixation count or sum of fixation durations on a certain element can be related to the importance of the element.

Numerous other ET measures exist

Eye-tracking

Eye tracking in games Eye-tracking as an input

First person shooters Noncommand input Educational games

Quake 2: (Left) When the player looks at the robot standing on the left-hand side of the screen (Right) the virtual world rotates so that the robot is positioned at the centre of the screen

[Smith and Graham, 2006].

The Little Prince Storyteller: The “Little Prince” gives a narration about the objects the user is looking at using synthesized speech [Starker and Bolt, 1990].

EyeChess: Gaze-based chess game that was developed to teach beginners how to play chess. Players play against the computer and try and checkmate the Black King in three

moves. [Spakov, 2005].

Immersion, fun, and user experience are recognized to be important

factors in any game genre, including educational gaming.

Study – 8 puzzle

Shuffled at the start Target solution

Gaze input in 8-puzzle -auto Interaction methods

Mouse Gaze-augmented Dwell-time

Gaze input in 8-puzzle -click Interaction methods

Mouse

Gaze input in 8-puzzle -click Interaction methods

Mouse Gaze-augmented

Gaze input in 8-puzzle -click Interaction methods

Mouse Gaze-augmented Dwell-time

Study 36 participants Between subject design

3 starting configurations Usability lab Tobii ET1750 eye tracker

Results

Question Dwell Time

Gaze Aug.

Mouse X2 (2) p

1 Did you like this interaction? 1.83 1.67 1.83 .33 .846

2 How easy was it to control the game using this interaction? 3.17 1.92 1.42 13.5 .001*

3 How natural was it to use this interaction?2.58 2.17 1.67 4.81 .090

4 How immersive did you find the game using this interaction? 1.83 1.75 2.50 7.44 .024*

Average rating2.35 1.88 1.86 8.11 .017*

Results – participants’ quotes Mouse - It feels quite natural since I’m used to

using the mouse Gaze-augmented - I wasn’t even aware that I

was thinking Dwell-time - difficult to think and use the eyes at

the same time, too much cognitive overload... I’m not used to the input method and had to concentrate too much

Conclusions Gaze-input methods received worse feedback

on easiness and naturalness than the computer mouse

Same feedback when considering user’s likes/dislikes

More immersed when using the gaze-based input methods than when using a conventional mouse.

Tersia //Gowases,Roman Bednarik, Markku Tukiainen

tersia.gowases@cs.joensuu.fi