I'm surprised how most commenters here are willing to accept the idea of Gazehawk without questioning it. No disrespect meant to Brian and Joe, but any experien

I'm surprised how most commenters here are willing to accept the idea of Gazehawk without questioning it. No disrespect meant to Brian and Joe, but any experienced researcher knows that any new research technology / method needs to be welcomed with a healthy cynicism until its value has been proven in the real world. Firstly, can it really be as accurate as commercial eye tracking hardware? We're talking about the difference between $40,000 and $40 here - a Pepsi challenge is needed! Some leading figures in the UX industry claim that even the top end devices can easily become de-calibrated and provide bogus data. Secondly, even if the technology is acceptably accurate, is the gazehawk research method effective at delivering findings that actually help you improve the design of your sites? The idea of a predefined panel of 'users' is rather worrying. A user is defined as someone who actually uses your site. In the standard gazehawk offering, they provide a group of trained testers (who get paid $8 a pop), who may simply not care about the problem your site tries to solve. For example, if you have a webapp about mountain biking, you're going to get a panel of testers who may simply not care nor understand about types of bike, trails, nor understand any of the terminology you use. Eye tracking heatmaps are a product of conscious thought (as well as low level visual processing) - if testers don't care about nor understand the problem your site is trying to solve, the heatmaps you'll get from them will be almost entirely worthless. Thirdly, analysis of eye-tracking data is very tricky. There are a lot of mistakes an untrained analyst will make, which could have major repercussions. I did a presentation on this at User Experience Lisbon a few months ago: http://www.slideshare.net/harrybr/what-you-need-to-know-about-eye-tracking-new-uxlx-version http://www.slideshare.net/harrybr/what-you-need-to-know-abou... I really don't mean Brian and Joe any ill-will. All of these concerns can be dealt with if they share case study projects and having an open channel of discussion with the UX research community.