At the Computer Vision & Multimedia Lab, we own a Tobii eye-tracker we use since 2006 to perform a variety of tests and to develop new interfaces based on eye gaze.
In the last years, we have supported important universities and companies by designing and/or performing tests with hundreds of testers with our eye-tracker, so developing a strong background in this field.
Our experienced staff consists of four persons:
Mauro Mosconi, PhD - assistant professor
Marco Porta, PhD - assistant professor
Alice Ravarelli - PhD student
Alessandra Setti - management staff
Recently, a new brilliant graduate joined our lab as a PhD student. Unfortunately, she is not receiving any scholarship from our University; therefore we are looking for a way to let her engage in research while earning her living.
Our first need is to grant her the equivalent of a PhD scholarship, that is about Euro 13.000 per year. Considering the costs of (1) renting an eye-tracker, (2) hiring eye-tracking/usability specialists, (3) recruiting testers, we are sure that both universities and companies will seriously consider the opportunity of establishing a partnership with our lab. Moreover, companies will probably consider tax incentives for research investments.
If you think you may be interested, please, contact us at mauro.mosconi@unipv.it!
WHO MAY BE INTERESTED?
It is well known that eye-tracking applications include web usability, advertising, sponsorship, package design and automotive engineering. A wide variety of disciplines use eye tracking techniques, including cognitive science, psychology, human-computer interaction, marketing research and so on..
Our group has performed hundreds of USER TESTS: - to study the usability of intranet interfaces for a global telecommunications company and of many web sites; - to compare the effectiveness of different layout solutions for multimedia contents within web pages; - to study the cognitive effectiveness of subtitle processing; - to investigate new image display methods within the so-called Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) category (in cooperation with the Imperial College of London and the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories); - to support the analysis of a hyperlexic patient..
The Computer Vision and Multimedia Lab of the University of Pavia has also been active in developing INTERFACES OPERATED THROUGH THE EYES, which can be of great help for people with severe disabilities. Projects carried out in this field include: Eye-S, an eye-controlled input system in which characters, as well as general eye commands, are created through sequences of fixations on nine invisible areas of the screen; WeyeB, a browsing system allowing the two basic Web surfing operations, namely page scrolling and link selection, to be easily performed without using the hands; ceCursor, an eye-driven cursor for MS Windows which behaves differently according to the "context" (it can be discretely shifted from one icon to another when it is within the desktop or a folder, while it can be continuously and precisely moved when it is within an application window or in absence of icons). Another project is also e5Learning, an e-learning environment where eye tracking is exploited to observe user behavior, so as to adapt content presentation in real-time.
If you want more info about these projects, please, contact Marco Porta at marco.porta@unipv.it.