Measurement and modeling of eye-mouse behavior in the presence of nonlinear page layouts

As search pages are becoming increasingly complex, with images and nonlinear page layouts, understanding how users examine the page is important. We present a lab study on the effect of a rich informational panel to the right of the search result column, on eye and mouse behavior. Using eye and mouse data, we show that the flow of user attention on nonlinear page layouts is different from the widely believed top-down linear examination order of search results. We further demonstrate that the mouse, like the eye, is sensitive to two key attributes of page elements -- their position (layout), and their relevance to the user's task. We identify mouse measures that are strongly correlated with eye movements, and develop models to predict user attention (eye gaze) from mouse activity. These findings show that mouse tracking can be used to infer user attention and information flow patterns on search pages. Potential applications include ranking, search page optimization, and UI evaluation.