Over the weekend I was alerted, somewhat strategically with a Twitter DM, to the launch of a new eye tracking simulation product by 3M. Per Nystedt from Tobii eye tracking was first expert eye tracking guru to blog about the 3M Visual Attention Service VS Real Eye Tracking.

Following on from Per's post about I did a little more analysis.

3M's perspective

Tobii eye tracking perspective

Very similar, no?

I undertook additional analysis, based on my incredibly popular post - You look where they look - that describes how facial imagery can be used to guide people's attention in advertising. Using another image, from the same data set that Per quotes, I found that the 3M tool shows nothing about how people respond to faces looking in different directions.

Here's the analysis

Per's 3M markup:

And my 3M markup:

Almost the same!

Here's Per's 3M heat map

And my 3M heat map:

Almost the same!

Here's Per's real Tobii heatmap:

And the one I did from the same data set:

Completely different!! Of course the child is looking the text and drawing peoples' attention there. Just like happens when someone stops in the street and looks up!

This 3M tool is not taking into account anything about how the image is designed (or photo taken) and seems to be treating the images in exactly the same way, given a simlar mark up area. This misses the key point about faces on designs! What about the emotion displayed, direction of view, context on the page, age of person in image, gender. Not to mention many other factors impact how someone's gaze will be affected.

The only use that this tool will be is to have designers "consider" their designs during the design process. This is a helpful and noble endeavour, however, the tool provides no use beyond that.