Abstract
(smt) is a simple mouse tracking system for Web pages. It is an open source client-server architecture tool for webmasters, developers and even designers. You can watch how people interact with your Web interface: where they click, what they highlight, how many time they rest reading some text and many other user trends. It may help website administrators to run usability tests and analyze the collected data.
Some studies [1,3,4] suggest that there is a strong correlation between eye and mouse movements while surfing the Web. Eye tracking measures visual attention as people navigate through websites, but this is a very expense usability evaluation system.
This work was part of a draft thesis by Luis Leiva [2]. The following are their two main research areas:
- Evaluate a website design. Every website has objectives to achieve, so its design should support the intended goals.
- Analyze and investigate mouse behavior trends. There are certain mouse behaviours common across many users which are useful in many ways (e.g. increasing the effectiveness of an interface layout).
- Serve as a multi-purpose toolkit. You can expand the field of applications. For example: perform data mining tasks over a defined set of users, recruit visitors for a usability test, classify your audience, evaluate pointing performance and/or motor abilities... The possibilities are endless!
This system was implemented using current technology and does not require any additional software on the client side, just only a Web browser.
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[1] Chen, M., Anderson, J. R., and Sohn, M. What Can a Mouse Cursor Tell Us More? Correlation of Eye/mouse Movements on Web Browsing. Ext. Abstracts CHI 2001, ACM Press (2001).
[2] Leiva, L. Human Computer Interaction in New Information Spaces. DSIC UPV (2007).
[3] Mueller, F. and Lockerd, A. Cheese: Tracking Mouse Movement Activity on Websites, a Tool for User Modeling. Ext. Abstracts CHI 2001.
[4] Pan, B., Hembrooke, H., Gay, G., Granka, L., Feusner, M. and Newman, J. The Determinants of Web Page Viewing Behavior: An Eye Tracking Study. Proc. ETRA (2004).
