Visualizing Gaze

Eye-tracking is an emerging technology that’s currently being used in fields like user-research and gaming. However, the potential uses and future implications of this technology is crucial to our privacy. Studies have shown that through analyzing eye-movements, personal information like sexual-orientation, drug use, personality and even certain mental disabilities can be revealed. On top of that the commercial value of collecting eye movements through webcams for purposes such as targeted ads is obvious, and it might not be long before we find ourselves trying to project our gaze privacy from those who wish to capitalize on it. What is it like to live in a world where our gaze— something that we are so used to being exclusively private information— is no longer private? The gaze-revealing headset was created to try to answer this question and communicate the idea of this technology to the masses in a more accessible way, as well as to spark interest in this emerging technology that could have a profound impact on our future.

Setup

The headset uses a commercial eye-tracker to obtain gaze position, which is used to control a laser pointer that projects the wearer’s gaze direction into the real world.

An interactive Conversation-starter

Participants are asked to wear the headset in a public setting, discussions are then conducted with the participants and some of the interested on-lookers. By translating a person’s gaze into physical motion in real time, participants are given a more intuitive and direct understanding of eye-tracking technology when most of whom didn’t have much prior knowledge of this technology. Many participants started brain-storming its possible uses, both positive and negative. The majority of the opinions indicate that while this technology has obvious potential in a wide variety of fields— from medical to entertainment— its potential to undermine gaze privacy is deeply unnerving. Through their interactions with the headset, participants gained a more solid understanding of eye-tracking technology and its immediacy.

Process