Scrutinize Your Web Design

What do your eyes really see?

Since experimenting with eye-tracking technology in college, StomperNet‘s Chief Scientist Andy Edmonds has been fascinated by how much we don’t see. It may not seem like it, but we only clearly see a tiny fraction of our total visual field. Our so-called ‘foveal gaze’ or tunnel vision is surrounded by a much blurrier, lower-resolution area commonly called peripheral vision.

We see websites this way, and for five years, Andy has been exploring how to convey this important aspect of user experience. At the same time, StomperNet needed a promotional ‘freebie’ to promote their new online sales conversion services. With a mission-critical business case in hand, Andy and StomperNet went looking for the right rich internet application (RIA) developer.

Already aware of their reputation for building solid rich internet applications (RIA) and Nitobi’s work on RobotReplay.com, Andy approached Nitobi to update his project and realize his vision. StomperNet needed a custom browser that would enable website publishers to understand just how little of their website that their users were actually seeing. StomperNet needed a development partner that had an understanding of usability, ActionsScript and Flash as well as deep knowledge of web browser’s and the Document Object Model (DOM).

Nitobi went to work developing an Adobe AIR app to fit the bill. Based on Andy’s existing work and StomperNet’s spec, the team built out the custom browser’s user interface, and added features for capturing screenshots and auto-updating the software. In the process, they ported Andy’s existing work from ActionScript 2 to ActionScript 3.

StomperNet called the resulting tool Scrutinizer. Andy Edmonds describes how site publishers can use it: “It’s meant to be a design insight generator. A good designer really understands this stuff intuitively–they grok principles of layout and white space. But it’s not all intuition–we have an eye tracker in our usability lab, but it’s pretty expensive. Scrutinizer gives you some of the same benefits without the $35,000.00 investment.”

StomperNet was delighted with Nitobi’s work on the project. “We picked Nitobi for their Adobe AIR expertise, and prior work on AIR applications. We also benefitted from their industry connections, which helped smooth out a bump in the development process.”