DiSEL's research strategy and approach

Most research into digital storytelling forms has relied primarily on usability studies or post-usage surveying.  While these types of studies can provide valuable feedback and insight, adding eyetracking data to the mix will provide researchers with more empirical evidence to help make recommendations on specific forms of story design.

Moreover, eyetracking research has entered a new era of development that allows for a more natural testing environment. The once-cumbersome process of using a camera mounted on the user’s head to track eye movement, has now been replaced with small, almost unnoticable camera located at the bottom of the user’s screen that calibrates with his pupils and delivers data within a centimeter of accuracy. The eyetrack record of a user’s scanning and fixation on specific elements of the design provides hard evidence of how people move through and are attracted, or distracted, by different visual and navigation designs.

Eyetracking data, coupled with think-aloud protocols which encourage users to describe what they are feeling, doing, or confused about, with pre- and post- usability surveys on reactions to the experience will provide a three-pronged measure of a presentation’s effectiveness.