Automated Eye-Movement Protocol Analysis

This article describes and evaluates a class of methods for performing automated analysis of eye-movement protocols. Although eye movements have become increasingly popular as a tool for investigating user behavior, they can be extremely difficult and tedious to analyze. In this article we propose an approach to automating eye-movement protocol analysis by means of tracing—relating observed eye movements to the sequential predictions of a process model. We present three tracing methods that provide fast and robust analysis and alleviate the equipment noise and individual variability prevalent in typical eye-movement protocols. We also describe three applications of the tracing methods that demonstrate how the methods facilitate the use of eye movements in the study of user behavior and the inference of user intentions.