2026/04/15 by Laura Wenclik, Guillaume Touya · 1 voice
Engineering · Computer Science · Neuroscience · #Spatial Cognition and Navigation #Gaze Tracking and Assistive Technology #Visual perception and processing mechanisms
paper · doi:10.1080/15230406.2026.2650276
openalex publication_date 2026/04/15 · openalex created_date 2026/04/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Eye-tracking studies are useful to understand the attentional behavior of participants of interactive applications. The current interactive web maps, in which we can smoothly pan and zoom, are interesting settings for eye-tracking studies because the gaze can indicate how the required interactive actions drive attention. In this article, we report a qualitative user study in which 17 participants were asked to extensively pan and zoom in a web mapping environment while wearing an eye-tracking-mounted set. The participants were given four different tasks, each one repeated at least two times, to collect a large amount of gaze data during zooming and panning interactions. The findings of the survey are two-fold. First, we show that before and after a zoom, participants look at landmarks stable across scales, which we call pan-scalar anchors. Then, an archetypal analysis of the eye-tracking data shows different types of behavior during a zoom or a pan. The most represented archetypes in our experimental data are the following: (1) during a zoom-in, participants mainly stare at the mouse cursor and do not look around; (2) during a zoom-out, participants mainly stare at the surroundings of the mouse pointer to gain more context; (3) during a pan, participants mainly stare at a fixed location on the screen, and the eyes do not follow the movement of the mouse.