PCD 4/13/07 Kumar

The eyes are a rich source of information for gathering context in our everyday lives. Using eye-gaze information as a form of input can enable a computer system to gain more contextual information about the user's task, which in turn can be leveraged to design interfaces which are more intuitive and intelligent. With the increasing accuracy and decreasing cost of eye gaze tracking systems it will soon be practical for able-bodied users to use gaze as a form of input in addition to keyboard and mouse – provided the resulting interaction is an improvement over current techniques. Our research explores how gaze information can be effectively used as an augmented input in addition to traditional input devices.

We present a series of novel prototypes that explore the use of gaze as an augmented input to perform everyday computing tasks. In particular we explore the use of gaze-based input for pointing and selection, application switching, password entry, scrolling, zooming and document navigation. We present the results of user experiments which compare the gaze-augmented interaction techniques with traditional mechanisms and show that the resulting interaction is either comparable to or an improvement over existing input methods. These results show that it is indeed possible to devise novel interaction techniques that use gaze as a form of input without overloading the visual channel and minimizing false activations. We also discuss some of the problems and challenges of using gaze information as a form of input and proposes solutions which, as discovered over the course of the research, can be used to mitigate these issues.

Manu Kumar is a Doctoral Candidate in Computer Science at Stanford University. Prior to joining Stanford, Manu started two successful companies – SneakerLabs, Inc. which developed web-based customer interaction tools and iMeet, Inc. which developed webconferencing software. Manu served on the Board of Directors of Netspoke, Inc. a company which provides both audio and web conferencing. Manu holds a Bachelors degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering with Honors and a Masters degree in Software Engineering and Business, both from Carnegie Mellon University and a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University. He has worked on research, development and commercialization of interactive technologies ranging from chat, web conferencing, application sharing, distance learning, audio conferencing, and CRM applications. He holds one patent in this space with additional patents pending. His prior research has been in the area of automobile interfaces.

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GUIDE: Gaze-Enhanced User Interface Design