Library Web Chic

Today I had an interesting conversation on the bus to work. For a while I’ve seeing the same UH faculty member on my morning bus ride. We’ve exchanged pleasantries but I hadn’t really talked to him for very long. This morning I had a chance to talk to him at length on the ride in. It seems that he is a professor in the School of Optometry and his area of research has to do with involuntary eye movements. How the eyes stay in sync with one other and related matters. He uses an interesting machine which allows him to see how and where people’s eyes are focusing.

What is interesting about this is that when I told him about what I do, particularly usability testing of web sites, he asked if anyone had done research on what parts of a web site or page elements attract users attention on an involuntary level. I wasn’t sure if research had been done like this. At least not with the type of equipment he uses. He offered to let me come see his laboratory set up and even better, perhaps use it to test prototype homepages to see which are most effective.

This possibility is really neat and something that I’d never thought about testing before. I’m hoping that I can at least go see how the technology the Optometry professor uses work. That way I can decide how feasible it might be to do some homepage prototype testing with it. If it works out it would certainly give me a different type of insight into users and additional information for creating effective designs.