ABSTRACT
Computational turn in digital humanities calls for heavy reliance on digital tools and environments for collecting, analyzing, presenting and sharing data for research purposes. Despite their abundance and availability, only a few of them, however, find a devoted user while the majority remain unutilized by digital humanities scholars due to issues with usability and accessibility. Hence, development and evaluation of tools and environments for the interpretation of and collaboration on digital evidence continues to be an important aspect of digital humanities.
This chapter offers an overview of eye tracking as a relatively new research method in digital humanities that could provide novel opportunities for the development and evaluation of analytical, pedagogical and communication tools and digital environments. Compared to traditional evaluation methods that mostly rely on verbal and/or written user feedback, eye tracking takes into account psychophysiological user characteristics, which helps obtain information about actual user needs and human behavior in more objective ways.
The chapter includes an overview of eye tracking metrics, types of eye tracking equipment and various purposes it may serve, pros and cons of this methodology, and examples of eye tracking application in numerous contexts that could be relevant and informative to digital humanities.
