Teaching Postgraduate Students User Experience Evaluation Through Eye Tracking Technology: An Experiential Learning Approach

The first point of interaction between a user and digital technologies is the interface (UI) and its design forms a crucial component of information systems (IS) development. Incorporating user experience (UX) design into the development of IS can give an organization a competitive edge over its rivals. Evaluation of the UI for its usability and UX is vital to ensure that end users can use the system to accomplish their tasks. Hence, information technology graduate students must have the necessary skills to conduct usability/UX evaluations when they enter the work environment. This paper presents our application of Kolb’s experiential learning approach to teaching postgraduate students the use of eye-tracking technology to evaluate the usability/UX of interactive systems. Analysis of students’ reflections showed that students found the hands-on experiential learning approach beneficial instead of a theoretical teaching of usability/UX evaluation with eye-tracking. More specifically, students valued the experience of conducting usability/UX evaluations using eye trackers and generating data visualization results using eye-tracking software.