iMotions’ new Automated AOI module revolutionizes eye-tracking data analysis by eliminating the need for manual retargeting in dynamic content. Researchers save time with automated object tracking, boosting productivity across industries like gaming, VR, and academia. This tool enhances workflow, cuts costs, and improves the accuracy and efficiency of eye-tracking studies.
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A Game-Changer for Eye Tracking Data Analysis
Eye-tracking studies, especially those involving dynamic content, have long been hampered by labor-intensive and time-consuming data analysis processes. Every object or person of interest in a dynamic scene had to be meticulously retargeted frame by frame, making the turnaround time for analysis painstakingly long. Luckily, those days are now over. iMotions is introducing a revolutionary solution that is set to change the game: our new Automated Area-of-Interest (AOI) module!
Automated AOI’s by iMotions – The First of Its Kind
We are proud to be the first company to offer a general-purpose dynamic and fully automated AOI tool. This cutting-edge technology is designed for anyone working with, and processing data from, dynamic content—whether in gaming, VR environments, Smart Eye Pro systems or eye tracking glasses in real-world environments. With this new module, we enable researchers to do actual research, Instead of spending countless hours manually retargeting each object or person from frame to frame. Researchers and analysts can now focus on what truly matters: the insights gleaned from their studies.
How Automated AOI’s work
Automated AOI’s are in essence quite simple really, instead of painstakingly targeting and retargeting objects ad nauseam, our advanced algorithm automatically detects and recognizes objects from frame to frame and does the retargeting of your pre-determined AOIs for you within every dynamic scene – eliminating the need for manual input.
…iMotions’ Automated AOI…has made it easier to make video-analysis for my research. With a few clicks, it is possible to define an AOI for an element in the video which will be followed through a specified duration. One particular aspect I liked is defining more AOI while other ones are being processed. The interface is easy to use and quite intuitive even if you have not used it before. In general, I believe that the Automated AOI module enhances the process of making eye-tracking analysis, reducing time, and increasing effectiveness.
Aitor Toichoa Eyam, Doctoral Candidate, Tampere University.
Old Was Good, New is (so much) Better.
When we launched our Dynamic AOI tool in iMotions 9.0 it was a significant step up in work efficiency, but with The Automated AOI module we aimed to truly take it to the next level for all our users. It was crucial to us that the new module should present an even more significant improvement in workflow and working hours to iMotions users’ actual research processes, and not just in our internal testing and validation. That is why we sat down with several iMotions clients and tested how the automated AOI would perform against a series of their meticulously, and manually, processed studies.
To ensure broad validation across different research fields, we included clients from game development, consumer research agencies (shelf testing), air traffic control studies, and academia. From academia, we gathered a diverse range of users conducting research in areas like social interaction, human-robot interaction, neuromarketing, art perception, and human factors in VR and simulations.
As you can read from the testimonials in this article, the feedback was unanimously good. Our selected testers got exactly the value out of the Automated AOI module that we had aimed for, with reduced data processing time being the central improvement across the board.
A Significant Boost in Productivity for Everyone
For commercial entities, the implications are enormous. With the Automated AOI module, companies can dramatically increase productivity by reallocating their time and resources from laborious manual processes to actual project development and execution. No longer bogged down by the constraints of traditional AOI methods, businesses can now prioritize more strategic and lucrative tasks.
The Automated AOI solution brings a huge level of efficiency to what can be a time consuming and labour intensive process, particularly with more dynamic stimuli like Eye tracking Glasses Recordings and UX Research. Over the years there have been AOI’s that were of interest to us from an analysis perspective but we simply haven’t drawn them because they would have been too cumbersome. We can see a direct benefit of the tool in terms of how it will save time and costs, but there’s definitely an indirect benefit in the way that we will be able to bring a new dimension to our analysis.
Seán Higgins, Managing Director, Future Proof Insights
The benefits extend beyond the commercial sector. Academic institutions, too, stand to gain significantly from this technology. Traditional eye-tracking analysis often involves restrictive hypotheses due to the labor-intensive nature of manual AOI adjustments. With the Automated AOI module, these restrictions are effectively lifted, allowing for a broader range of research questions and an increase in potential publications. Researchers can now spend their time on meaningful scientific inquiry rather than on tedious manual adjustments, fostering a more innovative and prolific research environment.
Reducing Costs and Improving Quality
A key benefit of the Automated AOI module lies in its ability to significantly lower overhead costs tied to post-processing eye-tracking studies. Many institutions and companies find that a large portion of their research budgets is spent on research assistants manually adjusting AOIs.
The Automated AOI module dramatically reduces these expenses by cutting down the need for intensive manual labor, allowing research teams to better allocate human resources and reduce unnecessary costs. Additionally, clients will experience less collaboration administration overhead, streamlining processes and improving efficiency. Beyond cost savings, automation enhances research quality and precision by minimizing human error in defining AOIs, resulting in more reliable outcomes.
Research > Manual Labor
The true value of iMotions’ Automated AOI module lies in its ability to let researchers and analysts prioritize what truly matters—the research project itself. Instead of being bogged down by the tedious task of manually inputting data, professionals can now devote their time to more creative and analytical aspects of their work. The module’s intelligent algorithm finds the most logical outline to the object of interest, ensuring that the focus remains on deriving insights and drawing conclusions from the data, rather than getting caught up in the minutiae of data preparation.
My research is concerned with developing a robust understanding of transportation human factors in the context of multimodal traffic operations and transportation safety. As we evaluate the behavior of pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers navigating surface transportation systems, visual attention is an invaluable performance measure. We collect this measure through human-in-the-loop laboratory studies and instrumented field studies. We have experienced iMotions automated Areas of Interest (AOIs) technique reducing the time required to perform manual data reduction by over 50%. This time savings is invaluable to our research endeavor.
David S. Hurwitz, Ph.D., F.ITE, Professor / Transportation Engineering Director / Driving and Bicycling Simulator Laboratory Director / Kiewit Center for Infrastructure and Transportation Research
To learn more about the Automated AOI Module, visit the new dedicated module page, where you can also get in touch with our Solutions Team, that is ready to answer any and all questions.
