Gaze-Aware Visualization Design Worksheet

The resource is a practical worksheet that can guide the integration of eye-tracking capabilities into visualization or visual analytic systems by helping identify opportunities, challenges, and benefits of doing so. The resource also includes guidance for its use and three concrete examples. Importantly, this resource is meant to be used in conjunction with the design framework and references detailed in section 4 of:

“Gaze-Aware Visualization: Design Considerations and Research Agenda” by R. Jianu, N. Silva, N. Rodrigues, T. Blascheck, T. Schreck, and D. Weiskopf (in Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics).

The worksheet encourages designers who wish to integrate eye-tracking into visualization or visual analytics systems to carefully consider 18 fundamental facets that can inform the integration process and whether it is likely to be valuable. Broadly, these relate to:

• M1-M3: Measurable data afforded by eye trackers (and other modalities and context data that could be used together with such data)
• I1-I6:  Inferences that can be made from measured data about users’ interests, tasks, intent, and analysis process
• S1-S7: Opportunities to use such inferences to support visual search, interaction, exploration, analysis, recall, collaboration, and onboarding
• B1-B9: Limitations to beware that arise from eye-tracking technology and the sometimes inscrutable ways in which human perception and cognition work, and which may constrain support possibilities.

To apply the worksheet to inform the design of a gaze-aware visualization or visual analytic system one would:

• Progress through its sections and consider the facets they contain step-by-step. For each facet:
  • Refer to the academic paper mentioned above (in particular section 4) for a more detailed discussion about the facet and for supporting references that provide further depth, inspiration, and concrete examples
  • Consider carefully how these details apply to the specific visualization under analysis and its context of use. Consider both opportunities that eye-tracking affords (M, I, S) but also limitations and challenges (B)
  • Use the specific questions under each facet (e.g., “Are lighting conditions too variable for accurate gaze tracking?” ) to further guide the thought process and capture rough yes/no assessments (if this is possible)
• Summarize a design rationale at the end of each worksheet section. This should capture design decisions or options and the motivation behind them, as informed by thought processes and insights facilitated by the design considerations in the section. The format and level of detail of such summaries are up to the designer (a few different options are shown in our examples).

We exemplify this use of the worksheet by conjecturing how eye-tracking could be integrated in three visualizations systems (included in the resource). We chose three systems that span a broad range of domains and contexts to exemplify different challenges and opportunities. We also exemplify different ways of capturing design rationales – more detailed/verbose or as bullet points.