Eye-tracking experiment to test key emerging principles of the visual communication of technology

The aim of this paper is to examine people’s eye reading patterns on technological information presented in 2 dimensional visual forms. This is in relation to testing the principles of visual communication (VC) applied on those visual representations and whether they obtained a similar (if not the same) patterns of recognition as suggested by the key emerging principles (KEP) of visual communication of technology (VCT) that had been derived from a literature review (Beh & Norman, 2010). An eye-tracking experiment was designed with an evaluation strategy targeted at gathering qualitative and quantitative data of reading patterns. The visuals selected for the experiment represented a comparison of three prepared in the 21st Century where there was evidence of their effectiveness in communicating technological information with visual representations with similar purposes and of acknowledged quality from the 16th Century. Five participants took part in the study and verbal protocols were recorded alongside the eye-tracking experiments. The quantitative results concerning eye movements and the qualitative indications of associated understanding were consistent with the KEP derived from the literature review.