philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Tobii Recommends Explicit Consent for Recording Eye Tracking Data

The eye tracking company Tobii had some VR demos that they were showing on the GDC Expo Hall floor as well as within Valve’s booth. They were primarily focusing on the new user interaction paradigms that are made available by using eye gazing to select specific objects, direct action, but also locomotion determined by eye gaze.

We also had a deeper discussion about what type of eye tracking data should be recorded and the consent that application developers should secure before capturing and storing it.

Hellqvist says that from Tobii’s perspective that application developers should get explicit consent about any type of eye tracking data that they want to capture and store.

We separate using eye tracking data for interaction… it’s important for the user to know that’s just being consumed in the device and it’s not being sent [and stored]. But if they want to send it, then there should be user acceptance.”

Hellqvist says our eye gaze is semi-conscious data that we have limited control over, and that this is something that will ultimately be up to each application developer as to what to do with that data. Tobii has a separate part of their business that does market research with eye tracking data, but he cautions that using eye tracking within consumer applications is a completely different context than market research that should require explicit consent.

Overall, Tobii’s and SMI VR demos that I saw at GDC proved to me that there are a lot of really compelling social presence, user interface, and rendering applications of eye tracking. However, there are still a lot of open questions around the intimate data that will be available to application developers and the privacy and consent protocols that will inform users and provide them with some level of transparency and control. It’s an important topic, and I’m glad that Tobii is leading an effort to bring some more awareness to this issue within the OpenXR standardization process.

See the full story here: http://www.roadtovr.com/tobii-recommends-explicit-consent-recording-eye-tracking-data/