Visualization of Eye Tracking Data: A Taxonomy and Survey

TLDR

Eye tracking is used to evaluate user behaviour, traditionally analysed quantitatively with statistics, but increasingly visualisation techniques are being employed for qualitative exploration. The survey aims to introduce eye‑tracking visualisation and review existing techniques. The authors surveyed about 110 papers, classified visualisation methods into point‑based and area‑based categories, and performed an expert review of how these techniques are applied. Experts highlighted challenges that must be addressed to broaden the use of visualisations in eye‑tracking research.

Abstract

Abstract This survey provides an introduction into eye tracking visualization with an overview of existing techniques. Eye tracking is important for evaluating user behaviour. Analysing eye tracking data is typically done quantitatively, applying statistical methods. However, in recent years, researchers have been increasingly using qualitative and exploratory analysis methods based on visualization techniques. For this state‐of‐the‐art report, we investigated about 110 research papers presenting visualization techniques for eye tracking data. We classified these visualization techniques and identified two main categories: point‐based methods and methods based on areas of interest. Additionally, we conducted an expert review asking leading eye tracking experts how they apply visualization techniques in their analysis of eye tracking data. Based on the experts' feedback, we identified challenges that have to be tackled in the future so that visualizations will become even more widely applied in eye tracking research.