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Webcame Eye-Tracking

Webcam Eye Tracking is a software created by the BMS Lab. Researchers and Students at the University of Twente can create an explorative experiment in order to track the eyes of their participants through a webcam. Within the Webcam Eye Tracking experiment, the Researcher or Student can create several trials and analyze the results of all participants through a gaze plot and heat map plot.

Person using the web eye-tracking
Webcam Eye Tracking For Education

At the moment, Webcam Eye Tracking is unsuitable for research because the data is not valid and reliable enough for data collection. So, it can only be used for educational purposes (i.e., explorative experiments). For example, researchers and students can exploratively try to see if there is a trend and understand the research methodologies behind Webcam Eye Tracking.

Best practices

To reduce potential issues and challenges, keep the following points in mind before using Webcam Eye Tracking as an explorative experiment:

    1. Think about what you would like to measure. When? What will it deliver afterwards? And how does Webcam Eye Tracking fit within your explorative experiment? This helps you realize what you need to build, when and how much time it will likely take.
    2. Take practical aspects into account: is there an easier way to do it? Uncertain? Ask the BMS Lab.
    3. Consider the limitations of the software to your study. Keep in mind that Webcam Eye Tracking is only for educational purposes and is in continuous development which means that bugs might be introduced as a result.
    1. Ensure that you have approximately 2 – 3 weeks to build your test. You might need to adapt your methodology based on Webcam Eye Tracking’s functionalities (see “Further Support” section).
    2. Your introduction screen should adequately inform your participants. 
    3. Any time you make new additions, make sure to regularly test your explorative experiment from the participant’s perspective.
    4. Duplicate your explorative experiment to have a clean backup version.
    5. Test your final version as a participant.
    6. Download your data metrics to ensure that the data output fits with your explorative experiment.

Further support

  • User Documentation

    In-depth information about the Audio Playground’s functionalities is provided in the user documentation (last updated on 15-09-2022).

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

    • No, your data does not have an expiry date. 

    • Yes, you can test the experiment by clicking on the “TEST” button at the top of the screen. 

    • Participants can subscribe via the experiment link. This can be found on the Webcam Eye Tracking’s dashboard. Before sharing this links with your participant, make sure to replace the “participantid” with a unique participant ID.

      1. On the Webcam Eye tracking’s dashboard, click on the “results” tab. 
      2. Select the trial you want to see. On the left menu of your study, click on the “metrics” tab.
      3. Click on the cloud with the downward arrow symbol next to “trials”.

      It will automatically download the data as a CSV file on your device.

    • After you have downloaded your data from the Webcam Eye tracking’s dashboard:

      1. Open Excel.
      2. Click “Data tab”.
      3. Click “from Text/CSV”.
      4. This will open a preview screen.
      5. Select the file.
      6. Click on “get data”.
      7. A pop-up screen will appear.
      8. In step 1, there are no changes needed. Click on “next”.
      9. In step 2, set the delimiter as a comma.
      10. Click on “next” again.
      11. In step 3, there are no changes needed. So, you can click on “finish”.
      12. Lastly, select where you would your data to be placed.
      13. Then, click on “ok”.

      You can now see your data in excel.

    • After you have downloaded your data from the Webcam Eye tracking’s dashboard:

      1. Open SPSS.
      2. Click “File”.
      3. Click “Open”.
      4. Click “data”.
      5. This will open a new window.
      6. Make sure your file type is set to CSV.
      7. Find the document you would like to open.
      8. Select it.
      9. And, click on “open”.
      10. The text import wizard window will open.
      11. In step 1, there are no changes needed. So, click on “next”.
      12. In step 2, under the question “Are variable names included at the top of your file?” click yes.
      13. 13.   Then, click “next”.
      14. 14.   In step 3, there are no changes needed. So, click on “next”.
      15. 15.   In step 4, under the question “which delimiters appear between variables?” tick the box next to “comma”.
      16. 16.   Then, click on “next”.
      17. 17.   In step 5, there are no changes needed. So, click on “next”.
      18. 18.   Then, in step 6, the last step, there are also no changes needed.
      19. 19.   Click on “finish”.

      You can now see your data in SPSS.

Want to use Webcam Eye-Tracking?

Go first through the steps on how to reserve Webcam Eye-tracking or go directly to the reservation page if you have already registered your request.

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