Developing features or introducing a technology into an existing product or even a new one, with a yet-to-be-determined system architecture, tends to be disruptive. Tons of questions need answers. Is it feasible technically? What’s the value? Are there any risks? Typically, the value of an idea is the driving force behind the start of product development.
A new technology might, for example, enable users to complete their tasks faster than before. It might bridge the gap between jobs, improving workflow. It might allow a user to carry out a previously manual task with a machine, which not only brings the advantages of speed and efficient workflows but often improves outcomes — such as unbiased diagnostic tests.
The segment I am responsible for at Tobii Tech delivers a range of solutions that help our customers to add a little innovation to their products. We measure our performance on the ability of our customers to commercialize. We want to make sure that any time invested in adding eye tracking to a new or existing product or solution leads to success or at least a fast fail. Helping our customers to do this is the core purpose of our Professional Services team at Tobii Tech.
This post summarizes the typical customer journey from idea to commercialization, and how our Professional Services can support you as little or as much as you need along the way.
Phase 0): is there value?
No matter what industry or sector you operate in, it’s possible to add eye tracking to your products and systems. The prerequisites are modest: a user, some value in what they are looking at, a machine, and an application. In simple terms, you can do three things with eye tracking. You can build an application that leverages the data it generates, such as eye movement patterns, blink rate, and eye openness. You can use it to facilitate the interaction between a user and an application. Or, you can be highly innovative and combine the two.
When our customer RightEye came to us, they had an idea about replacing the manual follow-my-finger test used to assess brain activity, with a device that leverages eye tracking data. The value: replace a manual examination, limited by the clinician’s ability to perceive detailed eye movements, with an easy-to-read report generated from the accurate data eye tracking can capture.
Our customer ControlRad had an idea to use eye tracking in the interface of its C-arm machines. The value: reduce exposure to X-rays for patients and staff in the operating theatre. By limiting the region photographed to the surgeon’s area of interest — captured by eye tracking — their solution maintains image quality with fewer resources.
In both cases, the value is clear. But how did they get from this point to commercial products? Typically, we follow our customers on a journey through technical feasibility, prototyping, development and integration, and validation.
Phase 1: Getting started
The best way to determine whether eye tracking is technically feasible depends on the complexity of the product. It’s a lot simpler to figure out for a standalone device with a dedicated application than say a system with multiple integrations and subsystems that support a range of applications.
If you are considering adding eye tracking into a laptop, a monitor, or a tablet-like device — what we call screen-based or remote eye tracking — you can do quite a lot of feasibility testing on your own.