Eye Controlled Media: Present and Future State

Today, the human eye-gaze can be recorded by relatively unobtrusive techniques. This thesis argues that it is possible to use the eye-gaze of a computer user in the interface to aid the control of the application. Care must be taken, though, that eye-gaze tracking data is used in a sensible way, since the nature of human eye-movements is a combination of several voluntary and involuntary cognitive processes. The main reason for eye-gaze based user interfaces being attractive is that the direction of the eye-gaze can express the interests of the user it is a potential porthole into the current cognitive processes and communication through the direction of the eyes is faster than any other mode of human communication. It is argued that eye-gaze tracking data is best used in multimodal interfaces where the user interacts with the data instead of the interface, in so-called noncommand user interfaces. Furthermore, ve usability criteria for eye-gaze media are given. This thesis also suggests research into a new, interactive lm medium: interest and emotion sensitive media (IES). IES exploits the viewer's eye-gaze and other a ection measures to determine how script paths of an IES lm are traversed. IES will be very di cult to implement today, as research is needed to investigate temporal problems in script construction, how multiple persons can use IES, how activation areas are constructed and how the producer of an IES lm is best assisted in writing the script. This thesis also contains reviews of current technical possibilities, psychological aspects of eye-gaze tracking and current eye-gaze based systems. Preface This thesis is submitted in partial ful lment of the requirements for a Danish Bachelor's Degree in information psychology for both authors. It contains work done from February to May 1995. Our supervisor on the project has been John Paulin Hansen, the Risø National Laboratory. The thesis has been made solely by the authors; most of the text, however, is based on the research of others, and we have done our best to provide references to these sources. In December 1994, our teacher in cognitive psychology at that time, John Paulin Hansen, introduced us to one of his latest developments: an application intended for public use and operated solely by the eyes of the user, called the EyeCatcher. We were both impressed and intrigued by this new means of controlling a computer, so when John presented a list of projects to Arne, including the present one, the choice of the EyeCatcher project was obvious. In the spring semester of 1995 we were to write up our minor's thesis on information psychology. Initially, we worked on two di erent projects, Theo working together with another group on a 3-D operating systems project and Arne working alone on the EyeCatcher project. Soon, however, it was evident that we could make a better project by joining forces, and we believe that the present thesis con rms this. Writing this thesis has been hard but in the process of writing we feel we have learned a lot and our initial conceptions of eye-gaze controlling have certainly changed! We have dealt with a lot of subjects, in an attempt to give this thesis a broad perspective on eye-gaze control, thus combining many aspects of cognitive psychology and human-computer interaction. The Aim of this Thesis Since this thesis is written as the nal thesis of the bachelor's degree in information psychology, the text is primarily aimed at teachers of information psychology at the University of Copenhagen and pupils attending the courses there, but we hope it will be of interest for the general HCI and cognitive psychology communities, too. iv Acknowledgements We would like to thank our supervisor, John Paulin Hansen, for lots of great inspiration, ideas, comments and an endless stream of articles. Especially our meetings at Risø National Laboratory have given us much inspiration, due to John's, to us, remarkable ability to cheer us up when we were in desperate need of it because everything seemed impossible and fruitless. Thanks also to Anja Philip and EyeCatcher -pilot Jesper Brix, both from the Experimentarium (a science museum in Hellerup in Denmark), for letting us stay there for two days, evaluating the EyeCatcher. Finally, lots of thanks are due to Claus Dantzer-Sørensen for expertly proofreading this thesis and especially Jill Glenstrup who had the laborious job of turning our attempts at the English language into readable prose. Hopefully she has removed all the serious errors, but any that might be left are wholly our responsibility. Arne John Glenstrup & Theo Engell-Nielsen v