Eyetracking

Review

This article discusses strategies for using eye movement as an input medium for standard computers.

Discussion

It seemed that the article was approaching this as a substitute for a standard mouse. I think a better approach may be to use it to compliment the standard mouse interface. People are too used to using their eyes to observe and their hands to manipulate to even attempt to take the hands out of the equation all together.

It seemed that using eyes as an input device also poses problems in the fact that people may be looking towards a computer, but not focused on it. For instance, in an office setting, the user may be looking at a person who is standing behind the monitor, which could appear to a sensor that the user is looking at the screen. This has a risk of interfering with the work on the computer when the user is not meaning to interact at all.

Despite the method's shortcomings, it is an interesting concept. A person's eyes are a very good reflection of person's intent. Many things such as scrolling down or changing pages that are often done without looking at a specific spot could be made to automatically happen simply by looking at where the user is trying to focus. It would simply take a clever programmer.