iTrace - ETRA '25 Tutorial

This ETRA 2025 tutorial is on state-of-the-art techniques to conduct eye tracking studies in software engineering using the iTrace infrastructure. It is organized as a hands-on half-day (3 hour) tutorial. There are two modules. The first module introduces participants to terminology and theories needed to understand eye tracking specific to software engineering and introduces the iTrace infrastructure. The second module engages participants in hands-on work to collect and/or analyze eye tracking data through the iTrace community infrastructure pipeline. The goal is to help participants learn how to get started using eye tracking to support their own research goals in studying programmers and end users. The tutorial is targeted towards researchers, practitioners, and educators with no prior experience required. iTrace is demonstrated in person within integrated development environments with two state-of-the-art Tobii eye trackers. Eye tracking is gaining traction in the programming and software engineering community. We use the ETRA platform to communicate the current state-of-the-art in a highly interactive setting starting from the theory and moving into the data collection, and processing pipeline. Sample data and scripts are available on the iTrace website.

Module 1 - 85 Minutes		Module 2 - 85 Minutes
Time	Topics Covered	Time	Topics Covered
10 mins	Introduction to eye tracking, terminology, and current limitations	30 mins	Exercise 1 (data collection on a sample Java open source application)
20 mins	Attention, mental models, cognitive load and borrrowing from psychology	30 mins	Exercise 2 (processing of data collected from Exercise 1 individually and/or in groups)
10 mins	Introduction to iTrace	15 mins	Live demo on a separate station to try otheriTrace plugins.
15 mins	Equipment, Areas of Interest, Eye tracking Metrics, and Fixation Detection	10 mins	Wrap-up and Conclusion
15 mins	Studies using iTrace
10 mins	Practical Guidelines
5 mins	Q&A

ETRA 2025 Tutorial