Gaze-based selection of standard-size menu items

ABSTRACT

With recent advances in eye tracking technology, eye gaze gradually gains acceptance as a pointing modality. Its relatively low accuracy, however, determines the need to use enlarged controls in eye-based interfaces rendering their design rather peculiar. Another factor impairing pointing performance is deficient robustness of an eye tracker's calibration. To facilitate pointing at standard-size menus, we developed a technique that uses dynamic target expansion for on-line correction of the eye tracker's calibration. Correction is based on the relative change in the gaze point location upon the expansion. A user study suggests that the technique affords a dramatic six-fold improvement in selection accuracy. This is traded off against a much smaller reduction in performance speed (39%). The technique is thus believed to contribute to development of universal-access solutions supporting navigation through standard menus by eye gaze alone.

REFERENCES

• 1: Duchowski, A. T. A breadth-first survey of eye tracking applications. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers, 34, 2002, 455--470.
• 2: Robert J. K. Jacob, Eye tracking in advanced interface design, Virtual environments and advanced interface design, Oxford University Press, Inc., New York, NY, 1995
• 3: Michael McGuffin , Ravin Balakrishnan, Acquisition of expanding targets, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Changing our world, changing ourselves, April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA [doi>10.1145/503376.503388]
• 4: Darius Miniotas , Oleg Špakov , I. Scott MacKenzie, Eye gaze interaction with expanding targets, CHI '04 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 24-29, 2004, Vienna, Austria [doi>10.1145/985921.986037]
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• 6: Shumin Zhai , Stéphane Conversy , Michel Beaudouin-Lafon , Yves Guiard, Human on-line response to target expansion, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642644]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Input devices and strategies (e.g., mouse, touchscreen)

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Interaction styles (e.g., commands, menus, forms, direct manipulation)

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
eye tracking, eye-based interaction, human performance, menus, pointing, target expansion