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Entries categorized as ‘Information Architecture’

Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye

February 9, 2009 by Mike Little · 1 Comment

There is an interesting eye tracking story over on the Google Blog, covering their results from some usability studies they carried out.

Specifically: eye tracking to test the use of thumbnails in search results. Though the blog report is fairly brief, they did come to specific conclusion.

Our studies showed that the thumbnails did not strongly affect the order of scanning the results and seemed to make it easier for the participants to find the result they wanted.

There is a real time eye tracking video and some heat map images in the article too.

Go read the original and let us know what you think in the comments.

– Story from Official Google Blog.

Categories: Accessibility · Information Architecture · News · Usability
Tagged: #nuxuk, eye-tracking, Usability

The future of interfaces

May 7, 2008 by hugopw · No Comments

As some of you already know, I’m a big fan of the idea of minority report style interfaces, and the Nintendo Wii. This guy has done some work with wiimotes to create cheap interfaces such as this Desktop VR display.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

I’d like to start a thread on here about how we could approach the usability issues of VR displays like this, and really about how as we move forward what sort of challenges people see coming, and how they might be solved.

For a start, the reason I’m so keen on this idea, is that having had back pain due to sitting in a chair for prolonged periods, I can see a need for an “Active Interface” where I can spend my day moving about to interact with my computer.

I think that one of the interesting problems that the VR displays will pose, apart from the ability to link a point on the screen/in the space in front of you, with your finger/wiimote is that Information Architecture will become even more massively important. However, I think that by Benchmarking some real world solutions – like supermarkets, some of those problems will already have been solved.

Categories: Information Architecture · Usability
Tagged: futurology, geekery, Usability, virtual reality