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 long-

distance 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 eye-

tracking 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 eye-tracking 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.

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HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS

1. The college professor assigns a

paper for homework on the eye-reader

system. He tags key concepts within

the document and embeds video and

pictures to assist the learning process.

2. The reading is posted online for the

students to access.

3. The students access the reading,

and are provided with additional links to

augment topics the eye-reader noticed

the student had trouble with,

4. The system collects data about the

comprehension of the major topics,

and provides feedback to the teachers

database.

5. The professor accesses the database,

and sees that a complex topic was

difficult for the class. He can now

augment the next lecture to ensure the

class understand.

PAGE TURNING FUNCTION

One of the most important functions of the interface is the ability to turn pages. To achieve this, animated GIF page-turning 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 page-curl, to cancel they move their gaze in the opposite direction.

PAGE SELECTION:

Page Selection is another complex prob-lem for the interface to overcome. The user needs to be able to scroll through pages as they wish, skip through sec-tions, 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 with-in the green box, they simply move their gaze back to the viewing window to con-firm 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 off-text 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 eye-highlighter. 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. In-text 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 for-mat. 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.