Using an Eye Tracking System of Tobii Technologies model T-60 we tested the Symbols Application. At first, we were interested in knowing what part of the screen the child was looking at. We knew he liked to use the application and watch the videos, but we were not sure what was catching more his attention. Since the application has symbols with text, animations and videos, it was important for us to know what was working better for him.
The first thing to do for preparing the testing session was to adapt the mobile phone application to be a PC application in order to be able to use it with a laptop computer and using the mouse instead of the mobile phone touch screen.
The first big challenge was to carry out the calibration process where the child should watch 5 points on the screen without losing attention, but this step was very difficult since he lost his attention very easily and very often. Out of around 15 tries, we managed to calibrate the system a couple of times, enough to run a few tests.
At the end of the 30 minute session we watched the recorded videos and we got some interesting findings.
The most important observation was to realize when he looked at one of the symbols he was actually looking at the text area, contrary to what we had thought before that he was looking mostly at the images of the symbol. We could’t say that he was reading the text, but at least his attention at that moment was placed on the text in most of the symbols.
