TOOLS
Top Ten Uses for the Scrutinizer
Top Ten Things You Can Do with the Scrutinizer
- Simulate eye tracking in a usability task
- Assess the ease of use of multi-step processes
- Give your designer a fresh pair of eyes
- Find out what “pops” in your design
- Conduct findability challenges
- Ask: does your visual grid work?
- Evaluate your site’s contrast levels
- Insure learnability in your template
- Avoid button gravity errors
- Tell the story of how your eyes work
1. Simulate eye tracking in a usability task
Usability testing, where you ask a person to accomplish something on your website, is a very valuable technique. It's challenging however to understand what the user is thinking as they work. Many usability tests are conducted using a "think aloud" technique where you ask the user to say what they're thinking and doing as they do it.
In the StomperNet Usability Lab, where we have a Tobii eye-tracker, we've been amazed at how helpful the real time eye tracking gaze data is for inferring what the user is thinking. It reduced the need for the user to talk aloud. You can use the Scrutinizer to simulate the eye tracker, keeping you in synch with what the user is seeing.
2. Assess the ease of use of multi-step processes
Transactions, e-commerce, informational, or configuration, are some of the most critical aspects of your site for achieving business objectives. Using the Scrutinizer simulator, you can assess the visual grouping of the interface elements necessary to move through the sequence. If successive steps are not within the foveal view, does your design make the user action required to find the next step easy?
3. Give your designer a fresh pair of eyes
It's challenging to re-evaluate a design you've been working with for some time. The Scrutinizer can help generate new insights to a design to which you've become acclimated.
4. Find out what “pops” in your design
The Scrutinizer makes the squint test happen without any unseemly eye scrunching. By moving the visual focus off the page, you can see the screen as it's seen in peripheral vision and assess which features of the page draw the most attention.
5. Conduct findability challenges
When someone is looking for something on your site, they bring a lot of experience with other sites to the task. Typically, the user can find the search box or a menu option very quickly; too quickly for you (or them) to understand the process. The Scrutinizer facilitates understanding the search path the users take when attempting to find a specific thing.
Sit someone down in front of the scrutinizer and ask them to find something on your site. How do they do it? Where do they go first? Watch this video for a findability challenge example.
6. Ask: does your visual grid work?
Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity guide a user's interpretation of a design. In fact, there's a visual process that perceives your layout grid and a cognitive process that learns it. Is your grid apparent with peripheral vision? Does detailed focus augment your grid?
Show your site to a user with the Scrutinizer with focus off page and ask them to sketch the grid. Then, let them loose with the mouse and ask them to amend the grid as they discover additional detail.
7. Evaluate your site’s contrast levels
The peripheral distortion in the Scrutinizer can help you understand the level of raw visual contrast present in your design. Are key elements on the page perceivable? Do your text blocks merge together with the loss of color and clarity in the peripheral view?
8. Learnability
As users interact with your site, depending upon motivation and the quality of design, they'll potentially learn where key options are located. For this learning to be maximially effective, they should be able to use their remembrance of the location and look and feel of a page element to identify it in peripheral vision.
Ask the question: Are key elements of my site recognizable for existing users in the peripheral distortion? If, for example, menu options are not individually recognizable in the periphery, there's no chance the user will be able to re-access them with maximal efficiency.
9. Avoid button gravity errors
There's a strong tendency for users to aim for the last form button on the page when they think they're done with a process. Would this tendency lead your users astray?
10. Tell the story of how your eyes work
It's really amazing to people how their eyes and vision actually work. There's a whole layer of activity that happens beneath conscious perception. Tell the story. Give the demo. They'll be amazed. Here's a video to help.
