Acta Infologica, cilt.5, sa.1, ss.13-26, 2021 (Hakemli Dergi)
The aim of this study is to investigate the eye movements of participants during academic searching tasks.Since the Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Council of Higher Education Thesis Center are among thepopular academic search platforms in Turkey, we focused on the usability of them. During the preliminaryanalysis, we explored the most problematic tasks, and then analyzed the eye movements. The problematictasks were detected with respect to the unexpected differences of completion duration; the failure ofcompletion status; unexpected number of clicks; high number of fixations; high fixation duration; unrelatedfixation areas; and think aloud data. Tobii Studio 3.4.2 was utilized for both the collection and analysis ofeye-tracking data. 21 academicians participated to the study. The results of the analysis indicated that due tointerface design, the eye movements of participants tended to focus on unrelated parts of the screen. As aresult, certain parameters of eye tracking demonstrated how participants’ eye movements tended to generateintense fixations, increased amount spent for unrelated areas, intense mouse clicks, and increased totalamount spent for tasks. In addition to those parameters, users’ satisfaction levels showed a decrease as aresult of unexpected experiences.