Evaluation of the TV Customer Experience using Eye Tracking Technology

As the TV experience evolves to provide customers with a richer, more interactive experience across multiple devices, it is increasingly important to make the best use of subjective and objective techniques to inform the development of TV user interfaces. This paper describes the design of a new experiment to evaluate the TV customer experience using eye tracking technology, focused on the BT Player, a visually-rich Video-on-Demand application. Eye tracking provides an objective assessment which does not interfere with the natural interaction of the user with the system. The evaluation will capture a unique data set through the observation of test subjects exposed to a prioritised set of test conditions presented within a controlled environment. The paper presents the design of the experiments, including requirements capture, hardware and software setup, experimental protocol, data collection and analysis. The paper also outlines the challenges posed by the dynamic nature of the content and user interaction with the TV interface.