Hot-Zone – A Gaze Interface

摘要

The aims of this study are to: (1) identify the necessary gaze control schemes for human computer interactions, and (2) develop a gaze-friendly user interface (UI) widget. Given the low resolution of existing eye tracking systems, previous studies focused on fine-tuning the pointing process to acquire small targets. However, eye movement is fundamentally different from hand movement due to the anatomy and functionality involved. It's not plausible to directly apply conventional motor control models to gaze control. This mismatch, to integrate commercially available UI(s) with gaze control, resembles a typical problem encountered in the human factor study. That is, people constrain their natural variability to accommodate the existing machine interface. To reverse this design pattern, developing a new UI widget which accommodates gaze variances is necessary. Thus, we proposed a solution deploying Hot-Zone -a widget prototype to be controlled by gaze. Four Hot-Zone operation schemes were designed, implemented, and put into a pilot test to be compared with the conventional mouse device. This exploration demonstrated that Hot-Zone has advantages over previous gaze-based control mechanisms with its 'local calibration' capability which improved the reliability of gaze control when calibration was poor. A single hotkey is used to achieve multiple goals, including eliminating the 'Midas touch' problem, accomplishing the local calibration, and selecting items from Hot-Zone. The findings of this study shed a light on the direction of improving eye tracking techniques in practical applications.