Creating Audience Specific Galactic Simulations using Eye-tracking Technology

This study uses eye-tracking to investigate the differences in the way professional astrophysicists and novices observe simulations of galactic events. The results of this study provide insight into which aspects of the data are important and allow us to tailor the visualizations for a specific group. We hypothesized that the gaze patterns of professionals and novices would vary considerably. A user study was performed on two groups: trained astrophysicists and novices. Each group was presented with a randomized sequence of images and a video while their gaze patterns were recorded with an eye-tracker. We discovered that although both groups observed each image for the same duration, experts limited their fixations to a smaller area. Novices, on the other hand, had fixations which were spread across the images. For the video, the astrophysicists were more focused on simulations in which most of the data was visible and the camera angles had minimal axis change.