Eye tracking in user experience (UX) design is a technique to use specialized technology to track—and analyze—where users look on a digital interface and for how long. Designers use this data to understand user attention and behavior—and optimize how they place elements like buttons and menus to enhance the user experience.
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Eye tracking is a useful technique in usability testing and user research. It offers a detailed real-time view of user engagement and interaction patterns. That’s because it records where and how users look at various elements on webpages and mobile apps.
Eye tracking evolved from direct observation studies in the 19th century as a rudimentary tool to become an important part of user research. By the late 1990s, marketing research and advertising agencies had begun leveraging this technology to study how individuals consume online content.
Advancements in technology in areas like virtual reality (VR) have brought enhancements in eye tracking—and the ability to pinpoint user actions like pupil dilation and gaze patterns. Eye tracking glasses and VR headsets with eye tracking have gotten more sophisticated, affordable and helpful as tools.
Eye tracking solutions for UX designers and researchers have also become more accessible and cost-effective—in any case. Modern smartphones can serve as accurate eye trackers—something that’s very helpful for mobile UX research. The evolution of hardware and software has enabled diverse applications of eye tracking across marketing, UX design, psychological research and gaming.
To do eye tracking, it takes equipment that uses specialized infrared light to create reflections in a user's eyes. Cameras then capture these reflections to make certain of the eye's position and movement. Designers or researchers measure fixation points—where the gaze lingers—and saccades—the rapid movements between these points. This data really helps them understand the visual paths that users take during their tasks—like reading or exploring a webpage. And tools like heat maps and gaze plots visually represent these paths. They give clear, actionable insights into user behavior. When designers observe and interpret visual patterns, they can make informed decisions to make the digital products and interfaces they work on better.
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Eye tracking is a helpful asset to observe natural user behavior without interference. With eye tracking, designers can:
Eye tracking provides really useful data on where users focus their attention—and for how long—so UX designers can understand which elements capture attention and which don’t. This lets them make targeted improvements for their target audience in the information architecture and more. For instance, after designers analyze fixation and saccade patterns, they can refine the visual hierarchy of their designs to better match what users expect and need.
Eye tracking helps weed out the areas within a user interface (UI) that confuse or frustrate users. This early detection of usability issues can save a great deal of time and resources in the product design process. And when designers collect data, they can catch problems early and make needed adjustments before further development stages.
Watch this video to understand usability in more depth:
Eye tracking measures how often—and how long—users look at and engage with certain elements. It can reveal smooth flow areas, too, and these insights can help guide designers to replicate successful elements across different parts of the interface.
Eye tracking lets designers look deeply into the effectiveness of visual design elements—and optimize the visual hierarchy. They can see how users navigate a page and—from there—fine-tune the visual hierarchy to make it best for the user’s natural flow.
Layout sets the foundation for effective visual communication—and to make layouts that are more effective, designers can use approaches such as the red square method.
Watch this video where Michal Malewicz, Creative Director and CEO of Hype4, explains the red square method in detail.
Designers can also compare different design alternatives—and do so effectively. Eye tracking can give them concrete data on how different designs perform in terms of user engagement and ease of navigation. Designers can—therefore—make evidence-based decisions to boost both the interface’s appeal and its functionality. That’s particularly useful in A/B testing scenarios where subtle differences in design can have a big impact on user experience.
UX Strategist and Consultant William Hudson explains A/B testing:
Eye tracking offers empirical evidence to validate design choices—plus, it helps take guesswork and personal biases out of the design process. This data-driven approach helps identify what works and what doesn't in a design.
Eye tracking can uncover user frustrations through indicators like rapid eye movements or fixed gazes—often signals of confusion or annoyance. If designers understand these pain points, they can work with that much more focus to improve the user experience.
Eye tracking helps designers tailor interactions based on individual user behaviors—and this personalization makes users feel understood and valued.
Eye tracking helps designers and researchers understand user behavior, visual perception and cognitive processing—and it’s knowledge that can contribute to continuously enhancing UX practices.
Ultimately, eye tracking leads to designs that more effectively meet user needs—and it can result in increased user satisfaction, higher likelihood of return usage and positive product recommendations.
In this heat map example, users looked longer at the summer sales banner than anywhere else.
© H&M / Oculid, Fair Use
UX researchers—or designers—typically do the following:
Designers begin with a clear research question—and from there form a hypothesis. They then pick the essential metrics and create specific tasks and visual stimuli to help bring about the study—a structured approach to help them tailor their eye tracking work to yield actionable insights.
Designers can conduct eye tracking studies in lab environments or remotely—and they can do either moderated or unmoderated studies. This flexibility lets them collect data in the most suitable context for their specific study needs. It could be to observe user behavior closely, in a controlled environment—or capture more natural user interactions in their everyday settings.
For studies that focus primarily on heat maps, it’s better to recruit at least 30 participants. The recruitment process and the study's scale can vary—it depends on the hypothesis and the eye tracking metrics that need analysis. Designers can use software-only solutions—they’re significantly more affordable than traditional eye-tracker studies. These enable them to conduct tests globally—something that enhances the diversity and volume of data they collect.
These heat maps are from the eye tracking studies of three websites. Red areas are where users looked the most, yellow areas fewer views, and blue the least-viewed areas—and no fixations for the grey areas.
© Nielsen Norman Group, Fair Use
Eye tracking technology gives UX designers a wide range of visual data—like gaze plots, heat maps and gaze replays. They’re tools that offer insights into visual attention patterns and user interactions. They help designers understand where users look, for how long and what elements capture their attention and areas of interest. Eye tracking usability testing data is crucial for designers to find design elements that work well—and those that need improvement.
Designers integrate eye tracking with other research methodologies—like surveys and click-rate analysis. This multifaceted approach lets them get a good understanding of user behavior—plus, it captures data that users mightn’t report, themselves. This integration enriches the collected data. It gives a more complete view of user interactions and preferences, too. The combination of qualitative insights from interviews and quantitative data from eye tracking creates a foundation for informed design decisions that’s really robust.
Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains the difference between qualitative and quantitative research and data:
One point about eye tracking that’s very important is that it can go far beyond surface-level analytics to provide deep insights into users’ subconscious behaviors. This includes users’ instinctive reactions to visual stimuli. And that’s a level of insight that is invaluable for designers to create interfaces that aren’t just functional but intuitively align with user expectations and behaviors, too.
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Here are some:
Eye tracking mightn’t always indicate user awareness. Users might look at a specific area on the screen—and yet not notice important features. This makes it uncertain whether they’ve actually perceived something.
Eye tracking can fail to capture what users actually perceive in their peripheral vision. So, it makes it hard to be sure if they’ve overlooked anything—as eye tracking can’t account for peripheral vision where fixations don’t occur.
To solely rely on eye tracking doesn’t provide insights into the reasons behind users' visual focus. It indicates the location and duration of user gaze but doesn’t reveal their cognitive processes.
Eye tracking's effectiveness varies among individuals. That’s due to factors such as eyewear, pupil size and eye movement—and they’re things that can pose challenges for some UX eye tracking tools and eye tracking devices to accurately account for all users.
Despite its limitations, eye tracking is something that can greatly contribute to building up an understanding of users. When researchers and designers thoroughly understand its capabilities and constraints—combined with alternative user research methods—they can make the best use of eye tracking in UX testing and research. What’s more, when designers test with diverse user groups and use the best eye tracking software for usability testing, they can tighten their grasp of what it is about their designs that works—and what needs to be more effective.
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Eye tracking testing in UX research calls for a structured approach—and here are 10 steps to effectively conduct eye tracking tests:
Pick diverse real users who represent the product's audience from various backgrounds—something that can help get a comprehensive understanding of how users interact with the product. It’s important to make sure the eye tracking system supports participants who wear glasses—or adjust participant selection accordingly.
Test with five or fewer people—that’s how to efficiently identify most issues without getting into redundancy. Do multiple tests at different times to see how effective changes are.
It’s vital to make sure that UX eye tracking tools and computers are ready well in advance of the test day—to keep any last-minute issues from cropping up. Test the equipment to make sure it’s working and ready.
Conduct tests in a calm and quiet environment. Tell participants about the focus of the product—and that the purpose is to test the product, not them. It’s helpful to use viewing rooms with one-way mirrors and soundproofing—if possible. In any case, it’s vital to minimize any impact of the observers on the users.
Give users printed instructions for each test part to help them remember what to do. It’ll help keep the test smooth and focused, too, since users shouldn’t have to ask questions.
Prompt participants to use their information when they fill out forms—to simulate real usage and find any form-related issues. Reassure them that their data will be safe, and confirm that they’ve got all the data they need before they start.
Record observations about each participant—and that includes behavior and verbal feedback—to complement eye tracker data and spot usage patterns. For example, users’ facial expressions and utterances are things that can shed powerful insights.
Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, UCL, Ann Blandford discusses the advantages and disadvantages of different data-gathering methods like video, audio, and notes.
Have post-test discussions with participants to collect feedback on their experiences and thoughts. Be sure to ask them about their feelings and thoughts during the test. It’s important to be mindful about asking questions like these—to avoid leading questions. Honest answers from users will, of course, give the best insights.
Clearly explain test results to clients—and that includes what technical terms and data mean. Show users all notes and data, too. That will build their trust and understanding of the testing process.
Design tests around real events using common language to avoid leading participants and accurately assess product usability. For example, if a designer wants to assess how well users can change the expiration date of a credit card on a website, it’s better to ask users to make any needed changes to their payment information on the site—as opposed to “update your credit card’s expiration date.”
This study revealed that the more a product was on the bottom, the less attention participants paid to it.
© Eye Square / Oculid, Fair Use
In no particular order, here are some examples of popular and helpful eye tracking brands:
1. Eye Square is a specialist provider of neuromarketing research that incorporates eye tracking, facial coding and emotion analytics. This platform captures and analyzes real, explicit and implicit reactions of customers in many settings, and shows brands what occurs and why.
© Mike Stevens, Fair Use
2. Eyes Decide provides online eye tracking solutions, helpful for market research and product design. Their integrated platform supports constructing, running and analyzing studies.
© Mike Stevens, Fair Use
3. Eyezag provides mobile and desktop eye tracking solutions via standard webcams—tests run in-browser. They offer self-service and managed service solutions.
© Mike Stevens, Fair Use
4. RealEye offers screen-based webcam eye tracking, mouse-tracking and facial coding—with a platform that supports 10 languages. The system’s connectable to any panel or survey platform—and they have basic surveys also available to add to studies.
© Mike Stevens, Fair Use
Remember, UX eye tracking is a valuable asset for designers and researchers to apply in their product design. However, it takes a thorough understanding of the potential—and potential limitations—of the available technology to capture the most relevant parts of the user behaviors they need. Once a design team has a fund of accurate data to work with, they can work to fine-tune outstanding areas and retest the next iteration to see if the users’ gaze pays the desired attention.
Take our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices.
Read the Nielsen-Norman Group’s free report, How to Conduct Eyetracking Studies.
Read Eye Tracking In Mobile UX Research by Mariana Macedo for more insights into measuring eye movement as a type of research.
Consult Eye Tracking in UX: Decoding User Behavior for Seamless Design by Ehsan Jamalzadeh for more details and tips.
Go to Eye Tracking: What Is It & How to Use It for Usability Testing by Madison Zoey Vettorino for further helpful insights and more.
Read The Top 15 Eye Tracking Platforms for Market & User Research by Mike Stevens for valuable examples of tools and further information.
The primary metrics include:
Fixations: These happen whenever the eyes stop moving and focus on a specific point. The number, duration, and location of fixations give insights into what attracts attention and holds it.
Saccades: They’re rapid eye movements between fixations. To analyze saccades helps researchers understand how users navigate through information—plus what elements they skip.
Pupil dilation: Changes in pupil size can indicate interest or cognitive load. Larger pupils often suggest increased attention—or mental effort.
Gaze path: That’s the sequence of fixations and saccades, and it shows the path that the eyes travel across a visual field. It helps map out how a viewer processes information—and in what order.
Heatmaps: They’re visual representations that aggregate data from multiple users to show areas of high and low visual attention. High-attention areas appear warmer (redder) on the heatmap.
Time to first fixation: This metric measures how quickly an element attracts attention after exposure to the stimulus. It’s useful for determining the immediate impact of a design.
Take our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices.
Yes—and here are key ways eye tracking data aids in predicting user behavior:
Attention prediction: From analyzing where users most frequently fix their gaze, you can predict which parts of a design will attract attention. This helps you to put content in the best places—so they match what users expect.
Interest and engagement: Eye tracking can reveal the elements that hold a user's interest the longest—so suggesting engagement levels. That’s particularly useful for enhancing features or content that users find appealing.
Usability issues: To track how eyes move across a screen helps spot areas where users might struggle. For instance, if many users skip over a crucial navigation button, the designer mightn’t have placed it prominently.
Conversion optimization: In e-commerce, to understand which products or information capture attention—and for how long—can predict buying behavior. This lets businesses adjust layouts to make it more likely users will make a purchase.
Take our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices.
Researchers encounter several challenges there. First, technical issues—like calibration errors—can affect the accuracy of the data collected. Eye trackers must precisely detect where a participant looks, but various factors including lighting conditions and participant movement can lead to errors. Second, participants' differences in physiology—such as eye shape or pupil size—may also complicate data accuracy. What’s more, the intrusive nature of some eye tracking devices can influence participant behavior—and lead to less natural responses.
To tackle these challenges, researchers should make sure there’s proper calibration of the eye tracking device before each session—and consider using less intrusive equipment. It’s also good to conduct tests in a controlled environment, and minimize external variables that could affect the data.
Take our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices.
Greatly—by providing insights that help designers make UIs that are more intuitive and inclusive. This technology lets researchers observe precisely where users focus their gaze when they’re interacting with a design. This data reveals which areas attract attention and which don’t. This lets designers adjust layouts, typography and colors to improve user engagement and accessibility.
For users with disabilities, eye tracking offers valuable information. Designers can use this data to tailor interfaces that accommodate varying needs—and make digital content more accessible for people with visual impairments or cognitive disorders.
What’s more, eye tracking helps identify navigational challenges within a design. And when designers understand how users naturally interact with a site or application, they can simplify navigation to lighten the cognitive load on users—make technology usable for a broader audience.
Watch our video on accessibility to understand this important subject in more detail:
Yes. There’s web-based eye tracking software that uses standard webcams to record gaze data. This innovation lets researchers collect eye tracking data without needing specialized equipment or face-to-face interaction.
In remote eye tracking, participants can complete tasks on their devices at home while the software captures where they look on the screen in real-time. This method’s particularly useful for studies that aim to understand how users interact with websites or digital advertisements.
However, remote eye tracking may present some challenges compared to traditional methods. The accuracy of gaze data can vary depending on the quality of the participant's webcam and lighting conditions. Researchers have less control over the testing environment, too—something that can introduce variables that affect the data.
Read The Top 15 Eye Tracking Platforms for Market & User Research by Mike Stevens for valuable examples of tools and further information.
Take our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices.
Typically, it’s between 15 to 30 minutes. This duration is ideal to get sufficient data without causing participants discomfort or fatigue. The length of a session can vary depending on the study's objectives and the complexity of the tasks involved. Shorter sessions, lasting around 15 minutes, are common for studies that focus on specific aspects of user interaction—like to understand how users navigate a webpage or interact with an advertisement.
These shorter sessions help keep the participant's engagement high and make sure that the data collected reflects their natural behavior without fatigue influencing their responses. Longer sessions—which may extend up to 30 minutes or more—are necessary for more detailed studies. These might involve complex tasks or call for participants to interact with multiple interfaces.
Take our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices.
It can do it primarily because it involves collecting detailed data about where individuals look—and for how long. This data—while it’s valuable for research—could potentially reveal sensitive information about a person's interests, habits or even health conditions. To protect privacy, researchers have got to handle eye tracking data very carefully. They must make sure that they store and transmit data securely to prevent unauthorized access. It’s also essential to anonymize the data—remove any information that could identify individual participants.
Participants should always give informed consent before participating in an eye tracking study. This consent process involves explaining how researchers will use the eye tracking data, what they’ll record—and how they’ll protect participants' privacy. Researchers must also let participants know that they’ve got the right to withdraw from the study at any time.
Take our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices.
Cultural differences have a great effect on eye tracking studies, and that’s because they influence how people view and interpret visual information. For example, individuals from different cultural backgrounds may focus on various elements of a webpage or advertisement due to differing norms and values. Western cultures often follow a left-to-right reading pattern—which influences how participants scan and process information. In contrast, cultures that are used to right-to-left scripts—like Arabic—might exhibit different eye movement patterns.
These cultural distinctions can lead to different gaze patterns—which is something that researchers need to consider when they design eye tracking studies and interpret their results. For instance, the placement of important content or calls to action is something they might need to adjust.
What’s more, cultural differences in non-verbal communication—like how significant eye contact is—can also impact how participants respond to visual stimuli. In some cultures, direct eye contact is less common. This could affect how people engage with images or videos of faces during studies.
To address these challenges, it’s important to design studies that are culturally sensitive and think about these variations when picking participants and making test materials.
Professor Alan Dix explains why it’s important to design with culture in mind:
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To analyze eye tracking data calls for a combination of technical and analytical skills.
Familiarity with eye tracking technology and the software to collect and analyze the data is crucial. Researchers need to understand how to set up the equipment, calibrate it correctly and troubleshoot common issues.
Statistical skills are also vital here. Researchers must know how to interpret metrics such as fixation duration, saccade paths and heatmaps. These metrics provide insights into where, how long and how often participants look at specific areas of a screen.
Attention to detail is another important skill. Eye tracking studies generate large volumes of data—and meticulous attention is necessary to make sure of accurate analysis. It’s vital to carefully manage and scrutinize the data to avoid errors that could skew results.
Critical thinking is vital. Analysts mustn’t just handle data competently but interpret the results within the context of the study’s goals, too. They’ve got to ask the right questions and consider various factors that could influence the data—like the participant's age, cultural background or familiarity with the tested interface.
Eye tracking integrates well with other UX research methods—to provide comprehensive insights into user behavior and preferences. When designers or researchers combine it with techniques like usability testing, surveys and interviews, eye tracking offers a deeper understanding of how users interact with a product.
During usability testing, eye tracking can reveal what users actually look at while they’re trying to complete tasks—and complement the verbal feedback they provide. This method lets researchers see if users find interfaces intuitive or if their gaze patterns indicate confusion. For example, if users frequently miss a crucial button or link, the design may need adjustment.
Surveys and interviews—though—collect subjective data about user preferences and satisfaction. Eye tracking adds objective data to these insights. It confirms or questions the accuracy of self-reported information. It can show whether users' stated preferences actually do align with their actual viewing behavior.
To incorporate eye tracking with A/B testing is another powerful combination. Researchers can compare how different design variations influence where users look—something that provides concrete evidence to support design decisions.
Take our Master Class Design with Data: A Guide to A/B Testing with Zoltan Kollin, Design Principal at IBM.
Consultant Editor and Author, William Hudson explains A/B testing in this video:
Gwizdka, J., Dillon, A., & Zhang, Y. (2020). Eye-Tracking as a Method for Enhancing Research on Information Search. In Advances in the Human Side of Service Engineering (pp. 161–181). Springer International Publishing.
This publication discusses how eye tracking is useful to enhance research on information search. The authors argue that the human eye plays a crucial role in information acquisition from the external world, and much of contemporary information technology relies on visual processing. Eye tracking methods are considered to offer theoretically reliable measures of visual attention and search task activities. The paper presents examples of eye tracking tools and how they capture data—and examines how eye tracking data has been used to assess cognitive factors in information search. It provides valuable insights into the potential of eye tracking for advancing research in this area.
1. Bojko, A. (2013). Eye Tracking the User Experience: A Practical Guide to Research. Rosenfeld Media.
This book is a practical guide for how to conduct eye tracking studies in UX research. It covers the entire process—from planning and conducting studies to analyzing and interpreting the results. The book has been influential in making eye tracking more accessible to UX researchers by providing a step-by-step approach and best practices. It’s helped establish eye tracking as a standard tool in the UX researcher's toolkit.
2. Holmqvist, K., Nyström, M., Andersson, R., Dewhurst, R., Jarodzka, H., & Van de Weijer, J. (2011). Eye Tracking: A Comprehensive Guide to Methods and Measures. OUP Oxford.
This comprehensive book provides a thorough introduction to eye tracking, covering the underlying theory, hardware, data analysis and applications. It’s been influential in establishing a common framework for eye tracking research and has become a standard reference for researchers in the field. The book covers a wide range of topics, from the physiology of the eye to advanced data analysis techniques. This makes it a valuable resource for both novice and experienced eye tracking researchers.
Here's the entire UX literature on Eye Tracking by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:
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