UNI KO-LD’s paper on “Analyzing the Impact of Cognitive Load in Evaluating Gaze-based Typing” received the Best Student Paper Award from the Program and Organising Committees of the 30th ΙΕΕΕ International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems, that was held in Thessaloniki, Greece June 2017.
The paper deals with Gaze-based virtual keyboards that provide an effective interface for text entry by eye movements. The efficiency and usability of these keyboards have traditionally been evaluated with conventional text entry performance measures such as words per minute, keystrokes per character, backspace usage, etc. However, in comparison to the traditional text entry
approaches, gaze-based typing involves natural eye movements that are highly correlated with human brain cognition. Employing
eye gaze as an input could lead to excessive mental demand, and in this work we argue the need to include cognitive
load as an eye typing evaluation measure. We evaluate three variations of gaze-based virtual keyboards, which implement
variable designs in terms of word suggestion positioning. The conventional text entry metrics indicate no significant
difference in the performance of the different keyboard designs. However, STFT (Short-time Fourier Transform) based analysis
of EEG signals indicate variances in the mental workload of participants while interacting with these designs. Moreover,
the EEG analysis provides insights into the user’s cognition variation for different typing phases and intervals, which
should be considered in order to improve eye typing usability.
You can check the full paper in our publication list.