Grant: Idea to Innovation

Summary*The objective of this proposal is to investigate the commercial potential of a cloud-based visualisation technique of the emotional state of users interacting with computer software. The novelty lies in the triangulation of multiple data sources and the utilization of machine learning techniques. This technique can help usability experts make a more comprehensive diagnostic of the user experience and of the ergonomic characteristics of an interface by identifying, for example, which parts of an interface generate positive and negative emotions. The benefits of the usability testing technique under investigation were demonstrated with a prototype system and were described in published scientific papers in various contexts, such as websites and mobile applications evaluation. The current prototype of Photobooth has been successfully used in a collaborative research context by Canadian companies across a number of industries.*Traditional gaze heatmaps are used in eye tracking as intuitive representations of aggregated gaze data. Their main use is to help answer the question: ""Where in the interface do people tend to look?"" In our visualization method, the users' gaze now serves as a means of mapping emotional signals onto the user interface. The resulting heatmaps represent emotions on the interface, and can help answer the following question: ""Where in the interface do people tend to react emotionally?"" *