Staring at the pointer - gaze behavior when people zoom and pan in maps
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Eye-tracking studies are useful to understand the attentional behavior of participants of interactive applications. The current interactive web maps, in which we can smoothly pan and zoom, are interesting settings for eye-tracking studies because the gaze can indicate how the required interactive actions drive attention. In this article, we report a qualitative user study in which 17 participants were asked to extensively pan and zoom in a web mapping environment while wearing an eye-tracking-mounted set. The participants were given four different tasks, each one repeated at least two times, to collect a large amount of gaze data during zooming and panning interactions. The findings of the survey are two-fold. First, we show that before and after a zoom, participants look at landmarks stable across scales, which we call pan-scalar anchors. Then, an archetypal analysis of the eye-tracking data shows different types of behavior during a zoom or a pan. The most represented archetypes in our experimental data are the following: (1) during a zoom-in, participants mainly stare at the mouse cursor and do not look around; (2) during a zoom-out, participants mainly stare at the surroundings of the mouse pointer to gain more context; (3) during a pan, participants mainly stare at a fixed location on the screen, and the eyes do not follow the movement of the mouse.
Authors: Laura Wenclik, Guillaume Touya
Institution: Université Gustave Eiffel
Language: English
Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7154466394