Reducing Barriers in Analyzing Eye Tracking Data: The Development of a GUI to Preprocess Eye Tracking Data

By capturing gaze points and eye movement patterns, eye tracking technology enables researchers to gain insights into visual attention, cognitive processes, and human behavior. Raw eye tracking data is inherently noisy, containing coordinates with occasional invalid entries. Researchers commonly face the challenge of cleaning and refining this data before proceeding to calculate essential eye tracking metrics. Critical preprocessing steps involve filtering out noise, detecting events such as fixations and saccades, and deriving metrics such as fixation duration, saccade amplitude, and more. This paper introduces a tool that provides users with the ability to preprocess data from both Gazepoint and FOVIO eye trackers. The methodology adopted for this line of work is based on Nyström and Holmqvist’s (2010) data and velocity-driven algorithm. Preliminary results show the methodology developed as part of this line of work is promising in terms of improved accuracy and reliability in detecting fixations and saccades. Furthermore, this code and its versatile Graphical User Interface (GUI) has been successfully employed in multiple studies. Finally, we present supplementary code for calculating various eye tracking metrics and percent gaze overlap, extending the utility of our tool for in-depth analysis of visual attention and collaborative gaze behavior.