Humans are visual animals and knowing how humans select information from the visual world is both scientifically and practically of great interest, for example for vision research, traffic safety research, (psycho)linguistics, medical diagnosis, marketing, usability. The tool to assess human gaze behavior is the eye tracker, a device that allows recording where people look, for example on a computer screen or in a supermarket. What if you have never used an eye tracker before? What eye tracker do you choose? What research questions can you answer with them? What questions do you need to ask yourself to run a successful eye-tracking study? This week’s Psychonomic Society Digital Event has answers to many of these questions.
Eye-tracking technology has progressed tremendously in the last few decades. In the 1960s –1990s eye-tracking research was either inconvenient, complicated for the experimenter, or conducted with invasive setups, requiring local anesthetics, and contact lenses or cups to be placed on the eyeball. Modern eye trackers, on the other hand, are fitted into beautiful form factors (see Figure 1), for instance disguised as a pair of glasses that can easily be worn around shopping malls.
Eye trackers are now more available than ever, in more configurations, and with more capabilities. Modern eye trackers have also become deceptively simple to use. Consequently, it has been increasingly easy to embark on an eye-tracking study without sufficient planning, naively hoping the eye-tracking system will provide the correct design decisions and interpretations for the study. The old systems were complicated, bare-bones, and forced the researcher to think about many decisions in the study. Conversely, modern systems will happily present your media, record all kinds of data, and produce metrics and visualizations, even if your research question cannot be answered with an eye tracker. Thus, the bottleneck of conducting a study has shifted from the careful setup and operation of the eye tracker to planning the eye-tracking study in such a way that feasible data analysis and interpretation is possible.
What if you are new to the technique, the first in your research field to use an eye tracker, or what if you do not have an experienced eye-tracking researcher in your immediate network? Where do you begin?
We have been organizing and teaching eye tracking courses for a long time (course Utrecht and course Lund). In these courses, we have met people from many different backgrounds: PhD candidates starting their research careers; full professors transitioning into new fields; applied researchers in governmental or commercial organizations; or engineers in companies. The main question they are pondering is simple: how to run a good eye-tracking study? The problem is that there are many potentially relevant factors to consider, and there is no one ‘this is how to do proper eye tracking’-checklist, nor do we think one such checklist could be made. Many of the considerations one may make for an eye-tracking study are trade-offs. For example, do you choose wearable eye-tracking glasses with a lot of freedom for the participant, or do you choose a remote eye tracker that can be placed on a table, with a much more straightforward data analysis?
Our teaching philosophy is to make aspiring eye-tracking researchers better deciders, by focusing on the relevant trade-offs they may encounter in their eye-tracking studies. Crucially, they need to learn how to inform themselves so that they can make the decision, not others doing so for them. A checklist will become obsolete or inapplicable, but the skill to view a design problem as a trade-off and make an informed decision is a sustainable solution.
Teaching aspiring eye-tracking researchers has allowed us to identify common problems that researchers struggle with, as well as helping us refine our own thinking and teaching materials. As part of us digesting these experiences, we have written a series of four didactic articles in Behavior Research Methods on the fundamentals of eye tracking. We hope these will help aspiring eye-tracking researchers think more holistically about their studies, plan them well, and be successful without wasting time making the same mistakes we and others have made.
In this Digital Event, experienced eye tracking researchers reflect on the four articles in the “fundamentals of eye tracking” series, from how to formulate research questions that can be answered with an eye tracker, to operationalizing research questions, to choosing an eye tracker, and the tools needed to conduct an eye-tracking study.
Featured Psychonomic Society articles
Hessels, R.S., Nuthmann, A., Nyström, M., Andersson, R., Niehorster, D. C., Hooge, I. T. C. (2025). The fundamentals of eye tracking part 1: The link between theory and research question. Behav Res 57, 16. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-024-02544-8
Hooge, I.T.C., Nuthmann, A., Nyström, M., Niehorster, D. C., Holleman, G. A., Andersson, R., & Hessels, R. S. (2025). The fundamentals of eye tracking part 2: From research question to operationalization. Behav Res 57, 73. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-024-02590-2
Nyström, M., Hooge, I.T.C., Hessels, R.S., Andersson, R., Witzner Hansen, D., Johansson, R., & Niehorster, D. C. (2025) The fundamentals of eye tracking part 3: How to choose an eye tracker. Behav Res 57, 67. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-024-02587-x
Niehorster, D.C., Nyström, M., Hessels, R.S., Andersson, R., Benjamins, J. S., Witzner Hansen, D., & Hooge, I. T. C. (2025). The fundamentals of eye tracking part 4: Tools for conducting an eye tracking study. Behav Res 57, 46. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-024-02529-7
