Where do helpers look?

This study used eye-tracking technology to assess where helpers look as they are providing assistance to a worker during collaborative physical tasks. Gaze direction was coded into one of six categories: partner's head, partner's hands, task parts and tools, the completed task, and instruction manual. Results indicated that helpers rarely gazed at their partners' faces, but distributed gaze fairly evenly across the other targets. The results have implications for the design of video systems to support collaborative physical tasks.