The Use of Eye-Tracking in Usability Testing of Medical Devices

Abstract

The study presented here was made in collaboration with a medical device manufacturer. Normally, the device manufacturer uses verbal self-reporting protocols, interviews and observations in their formative usability tests during product development. The objective of our study was to investigate whether the use of eye-tracking technology can contribute to the data collection and bring new data and knowledge into the product development. The use of eye-tracking provided five unique insights and findings. Although the evaluated significance of them varied, a couple of findings stands out as important, indicating that the use of eye-trackers can indeed contribute positively to the results obtained from a usability test based on traditional ethnographic methods. It should be noted that use of eye-tracking requires additional time, resources and technical skills including optimal light conditions. However, with the promising perspectives in mind, eye-tracking is recommendable as an additional tool for usability studies.