The added value of eye tracking in the usability evaluation of a network management tool

Abstract

Usability evaluation techniques have evolved over several years to assess the user interface of systems with regard to efficiency, interaction flexibility, interaction robustness and quality of use. The evaluation of the user's thought process is difficult to access with traditional usability techniques. Eye movement data and eye fixations can supplement the data obtained through usability testing by providing more specific information on the user's visual attention. Network Management (NM) tools have been developed to analyse the large amount of data generated by network applications and to display the data using various information visualisation techniques. The general increase in the use of information visualisation techniques has highlighted the need for methodologies to evaluate the user interface of software, including NM tools. This paper investigates how eye tracking data can supplement the usability evaluation data of NM tools. This paper further discusses the results obtained from a usability evaluation that used a methodology combining traditional usability methods and eye tracking methods for the usability evaluation of the visualisation techniques used by a NM tool. The results show that eye tracking does provide additional value to the usability evaluation results of NM tools.