Eye Reader Knowledge Transfer Interface Gareth Roberts and Ben Jewett
ABSTRACT: Eye Tracking has been around for the better part of a century now, yet it is only now that technology is at a level where it can take advantage of the huge potential it contains. In the current economic climate many industries are seeing the need to adapt by shifting their focus to accommodate the needs of a changing clientèle, and as such are looking to new technologies to help with the transition. One such industry is Education. With the vast increase in demand for on-line education services over the past decade, their exists a huge opportunity to explore how knowledge transfer is achieved, and to develop new processes and interfaces that improve the current systems. This project forwards the conceptual design of such an interface that will improve the experience of knowledge transfer, especially for fields such as longdistance education.
THE PROBLEM: As the education model changes, it is relying in ever-increasing intensity upon computers as the method for transferring knowledge to students. An example of this change is the way PDF documents are slowly replacing hard-copy handouts. The problem is that even the best PDF style reading programs were designed on principles of computing that are seemingly archaic, and require the user to adapt to them. The reader must continually use menus and the mouse to activate functions that they could previously do with a much lower cognitive investment with a hard copy (such as turning the page, the epistemic action of flicking pages to a desired section etc.). Is there a better way? This project will propose the use of an eyetracking interface that is intended to lower the cognitive load of the user and thus make the knowledge transfer more efficient.
THE USER: For the case of this project, the primary user will be students in an on-line university setting. Sex: Male or Female Age: 18 - 30 years old Technological Ability: Users of Laptop Computers with a basic understanding of microsoft systems and adobe products. They will also likely have some familiarity with new tech devices such as the Apple I-Phone etc.
THE PROPOSED SYSTEM: The system we are proposing is based around the design of a new software interface for reading documents, and is similar in basic principle to the Adobe PDF reader. It features the same premise, to provide an interface to transfer knowledge, yet the eye-reader uses eye-tracking technology to improve the efficiency of knowledge transfer. The system improves on the existing systems in three ways; it provides additional functionality for the student through it’s eyetracking enabled interface, it reduces the cognitive load of the student, and it provides invaluable feedback to lecturers to help them shape future lessons and tailor courses to the needs of the students. To achieve this goal, the system would need to use an eye-tracking enabled laptop computer. At the current point in time there are few companies producing systems with this capability, however our research proves the technology is now affordable, and it’s benefit to the user should see it adopted in laptop design in the very near future.
HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS
1
3
2
4
5 1. The college professor assigns a
3. The students access the reading,
5. The professor accesses the database,
paper for homework on the eye-reader
and are provided with additional links to
and sees that a complex topic was
system. He tags key concepts within
augment topics the eye-reader noticed
difficult for the class. He can now
the document and embeds video and
the student had trouble with,
augment the next lecture to ensure the class understand.
pictures to assist the learning process. 4. The system collects data about the 2. The reading is posted online for the
comprehension of the major topics,
students to access.
and provides feedback to the teachers database.
PAGE TURNING FUNCTION One of the most important functions of the interface is the ability to turn pages. To achieve this, animated GIF pageturning icons will be placed in opposing corners of the interface. The top LHS icon will enable the reader to turn back one page, and the bottom RHS icon will move forward one page. To operate the function, the user needs only look at the curled edge of the page. When this happens, the icon will begin to curl the corner further, indicating the action of turning the page is available. To confirm the action, the user simply moves their gaze in the direction of the pagecurl, to cancel they move their gaze in the opposite direction.
PAGE SELECTION: Page Selection is another complex problem for the interface to overcome. The user needs to be able to scroll through pages as they wish, skip through sections, or even begin on a specific page within the text. To achieve this, the eye-reader interface has a page selection bar on the rhs of the display. The page thumb-nail within the green box indicates the current page. To scroll through pages, the user simply looks at the green box, which will glow to indicate an action is possible. By using a quick eye-gesture to the right (Off page), the user confirms the action of scrolling, and can then move their gaze down to scroll forward, or up to scroll backwards. The faint green arrows are an affordance to indicate the scrolling capacity. As an added control, the further the gaze moves down the scroll-bar, the quicker the scroller will flick through pages. Once the user has the desired page within the green box, they simply move their gaze back to the viewing window to confirm the page and exit the scrolling mode.
READING TEXT: To help make sure the user does not loose their place in the text, the interface provides a light green box around the sentence the user is reading, and slightly magnifies the text. If the user moves their eyes off-screen or somewhere offtext while using the interface, the system will keep the last line of text highlighted to ensure the user knows where they were when they return to reading the text. If the user decides to begin reading another sentence, the interface will acknowledge it by highlighting that line once a series of words have been read.
HIGHLIGHTING TEXT: Highlighting text is important to enable the user to indicate what sections of the text were important for future reference. For this interface, this function will be enabled through a combination of key input and eye tracking. By holding down the Control Key while the interface is active, the system activates the eyehighlighter. The user can then move their gaze over the text or down a series of lines to create the highlight. By releasing the control key, the action is canceled, and functionality returns to the default setting.
PICTURES: With the design of a new interface, images can be treated as dynamic objects. Intext images will have a green glow when the user fixates on them, and the confirm/ cancel icons will appear on the left and right. By making an eye gesture to the right, the user confirms the action, and the image becomes a full screen image. If the user fixates on the image without wanting to activate the full-screen mode, they simply make an eye-gesture to the left to cancel the action. With the image in full screen mode, the user is free to investigate it as long as they wish. Once the user has finished investigating the image, they make an eye-gesture to the left, cancelling the action and returning to the document.
VIDEO: Videos can also be embedded in the document, and accessed simply through gesture-based actions. When the user fixates on the video, the green outline glows to indicate an action is possible. The small video camera icon is a visual affordance that differentiates it from a static picture. The user can then either make an eye gesture right to confirm the video mode, or left to cancel the action. With the video mode engaged, the screen increases to a large-screen format. Below the screen the basic video function icons appear, and glow when the user fixates on them. Once again, the confirm/cancel icons appear, letting the user know that an eye gesture right will activate a function, left will cancel. Once the user has finished watching the video, a simple eye gesture left of screen cancels the mode.
FUTURE STEPS: In any interface design, the ultimate goal is to develop a system that makes the user experience better. With this system, that could include the following investigations: 1. The investigation into how eye-tracking can be used to evaluate mood, and thus provide additional feedback to the teacher 2. The ability to effectively ‘mind read’ through the analysis of eye-movement and thus the ability to remove any need for interface features such as buttons for turning pages; the system will know your intention. 3. The development of sister-software to the eye-reader, allowing for increased use of eye-tracking enabled programs.