J.-S. Pan, S.-M. Chen, N.T. Nguyen (Eds.): ACIIDS 2012, Part III, LNAI 7198, pp. 178–186, 2012. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 Using Eyetracking in a Mobile Applications Usability Testing Piotr Chynal, Jerzy M. Szymański, and Janusz Sobecki Institute of Informatics, Wroclaw University of Technology Wyb.Wyspianskiego 27, 50-370 Wroclaw, Poland {Piotr.Chynal,Jerzy.Szymanski,Janusz.Sobecki}@pwr.wroc.pl Abstract. In this paper we present general problems of a mobile application usability testing by means of eyetracking. The motivation for considering this problem is the fact that eyetracking is still one of the most advanced usability testing tool. We achieved that by performing two eyetracking tests with the participation of users. We tested mobile application on smartphone and PC emulator, to find out which method gives the most valuable results. Both tests showed that eyetracking testing of mobile applications gives valuable results but to make it really efficient professional equipment designed for mobile eyetracking is required. Keywords: Eyetracking, Usability, Human-Computer Interaction. 1 Introduction Modern information systems often suffer from many usability problems. Applications developed for mobile phones are no exception [11], [12]. The ISO9241-11 norm defines usability as “extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use” [8]. There are several well known techniques for the usability verification (for example focus groups, interviews, observations, surveys, etc.). One of the most interesting usability testing techniques is eyetracking [4], [9]. This method enables to track the movement of user gaze on the screen, using a special infrared camera called eyetracker. In result of such test we receive graphical reports of where users were looking during performing tasks in the application. This provides data for effectiveness and efficiency analysis. It has few disadvantages, such as motionless head during eye tracking, using a variety of invasive devices, a relatively high price of commercially available eye-trackers and a difficult calibration [3], [9]. However, it provides very valuable information for usability studies. All of them are based on the eye-mind hypothesis that what a person is looking at, is assumed to indicate the thought on top of the stack of cognitive processes. The main purpose of our study was to verify the known eyetracking method in the considerably new, mobile environment. ComScore study [7] shows, that Smartphone adoption in the U.K., France, Germany, Spain and Italy has grown 41 percent in the past year (2010). The importance of mobile phones is increasing in the everyday life,