FeaturEyeTrack: A Vector Tile-Based Eye Tracking Framework for Interactive Maps

A promising way to gain more insights into how people read and understand a map is by analyzing their eye gaze while working with a map. However, eye gaze logging on interactive maps is challenging due to of various reasons. One of the biggest challenges comes from the interaction with a map that can drastically change the visual representation of the depicted content, making it difficult to determine what exactly is visible at a given screen coordinate in a given moment. This results in labor-intensive data analysis and study preparation. This paper presents FeatureEyeTrack, a framework for logging a user ́s visual attention while working with interactive online maps, which is based on vector tile maps. Instead of logging only gaze coordinates, we determine which visual map feature is located at the gaze coordinate, allowing for very detailed analyses on which features, when, for how long, and in which sequence have been looked at.