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voices that matter say eyetracking is useful

Several weeks ago I spent a couple days at the Voices That Matter: Web Design conference here in San Francisco.

UPDATE: For those who don’t know, I am officially living in the city again. Be sure to let me know if you make it out for a visit. And no the recent earthquake didn’t take us off the map…

The conference was a great event put on by the editorial teams of New Riders, Addison-Wesley Professional and others. Robert, author of New Riders book Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design, had asked if I could help him and his new company while they were tied up with the myriad of conference-related activities. It was a blast.

The conference included talks from a variety of web-related design authors and thought leaders including Dan Brown, Eric Meyer, Dan Saffer, Jakob Nielsen and Robert Hoekman Jr. just to name a few. Check out the conference line-up for more details.

Of the sessions I was able to attend, I particularly enjoyed exploring the world of eyetracking research with usability guru (or “the king of usability”) Jakob Nielsen. Who is, according to attendees of the conference, the thought leader designers love to hate. Interestingly enough, I was quite surprised to see how advanced his research in this area has become and how much he emphasized eyetracking techniques as useful in addressing web usability issues.

Personally, I think the research is useful but its use is extremely limited and does not account for the context in which users are engaging with a site. I think the way in which users engage with a site depends, like anything else, on context: why they are there, how they got there, what emotions are evoked, etc. That said, I do think eyetracking is useful when trying to get insight into how people read newsletters or articles online but when it comes to emotionally salient online experiences its usefulness is limited. Maybe Adaptive Path’s Todd Wilkens is right on with his post: “Why usability is a path to failure“? All in all, I think eyetracking and other “hardcore” usability methodologies provide only a piece of the puzzle when it comes to creating awesome online experiences, of which the social context is become increasingly critical.