Go crazy, test the boundaries, do something new, invent something never before seen… but please make sure it's usable.

Sometimes it can be a challenge to both be creative and test the boundary of a site's limits when trying to design a usable, yet esthetically pleasing site. Information architects and programmers have to piece a site's design into something that meets the vision as well as enables users to find what they need. The one thing that tends to bring creative design back to reality is the fact that most sites, if you plan on conducting business on them, must remain usable. This provides an opportunity to discover the benefits that come from using eye tracking studies.

Eye tracking, or assessing the "path" that viewers' eyes take on a website or other piece of creative, has a myriad of benefits in ensuring the development of usable sites. One advantage that stands out, however, is the concept of testing seemingly complex sites to ensure that the message is being received. It is not only about navigation and ensuring that the user can efficiently complete a test, but also about making sure that a user spent time in the right areas and was not confused by what usability specialists classify as distractions.

Eye tracking has caught on recently with respect to website design and usability because the data gathered is typically less adulterated and filtered by the user's verbal communication and based instead on what he or she might actually do. The eye tracking system watches eye movement, the duration spent on certain coordinates and provides visual heat map-style overlays back to the designer to show where his or her eyes actually went. 

You can combine eye tracking overlays with a user's verbal feedback as well, to get a total picture of what they gleaned from the site. You may realize that, for example, a user was unaware about a promotion on the site simply because the eyes never crossed the promotion's space. Or, you may find that the user spent plenty of time on the promotion portion of the page, however he or she missed the message because the person was confused by the way it was written within the space.

Through using eye tracking, you still need to select the study participants based on your target demographic and you still need to set them on heuristic tasks as with other forms of testing. Unlike other forms, however, eye tracking technology can help identify user confusion even when the task is finished within a reasonable time threshold and confusion is not verbally indicated. For example, you might set a group of users on a task and they, on average, complete it within five seconds (something you feel is reasonable), but you notice in the heat map overlay that they all looked at three different spots before they finally identified the destination. Those three areas might indicate an expectation from the target group on where certain functionality would better be located.

Alternatively, eye tracking can also be used as a defensive tool that justifies a certain aspect of design liberty. Costs for running eye tracking studies have come down sufficiently to justify their use throughout the design process rather than at the final stages. It is a great time to use the tool to help select from a myriad of concepts, rather than the one that seems to be the safest. A designer can now test a few concepts that "break the rules" to determine if users will have trouble in advance of launching a new site.

One great thing about designing for the web is the medium's ability to stretch the depth of creativity. Marketers can play with a user's interaction, experiment with layout, enhance pages with dynamic content, call elements out with animation and adjust functionality. But beyond capturing the designer's and end-users' interest, the site must also be usable. 

Eye tracking removes the guesswork to help marketers create more effective designs based on real data about what target market representatives are looking at. Without it, you could say you are flying blindly.

Things to keep in mind when using eye tracking

• If you are building a site that is going to be more frequently used by returning visitors than new visitors, such as a customer-only application, consider using the same study participants several times as you modify the interface.
• The less that is on a page, the more focused users are going to be with their eye movements. That does not mean that it is good design; it may be that users don't have anything else to focus on.
• Question phrasing is extremely important in eye tracking studies. If a user is asked to find "support" rather than "service," for example, and you've named the navigation item "service" the confusion may be a factor of the question, not of the design. Ask the question a few different ways with a few different participants to be sure.

Reid Carr is president of Red Door Interactive, helping clients -- such as the San Diego Convention Center, SkinMedica, BeneTrac and Sharp Systems of America -- to lay out strategies for their online presence and interaction activities. Before founding Red Door Interactive, Carr formed the interactive arm for the San Diego-based PR agency, McQuerterGroup. Prior to that, he was chief operating officer and accounts director at PBJ Digital, a bi-coastal Interactive development and incubator shop in Los Angeles; before then, Carr handled account management in both the Venice and Playa del Rey offices of TBWA/Chiat/Day. He has a BA from the University of Oregon's advertising program.