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UXC is a client application designed for conducting group user studies, data recording and controlling the experiment sessions. UXC is a part of the UXI Group Studies infrastructure developed at User eXperience and Interaction Research Center at Faculty of Informatics of Information Technologies, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava.

Main features are:

• Controlling devices for recording an experiment session
• Experiment session recording and stimuli timeline playback
• Connection with the UXR management application for:
  • Remote start and control of the session recording,
  • Upload recording data on session finish
• Integration with 3rd party applications used in the experiment, e.g., a web or desktop application, providing them with:
  • Real-time access to eye tracking and session recording data
  • Session recording control, i.e., to start/stop recording, query status, or control stimuli timeline playback
  • Writing custom events

UXC is a .NET WPF desktop application licensed under the MIT license. It is developed as an alternative to existing solutions for conducting user studies with eye tracking , e.g., Tobii Pro Studio, SMI Experiment Center, OGama, etc.

Supported devices and data sources in session recording:

• Tobii Pro eye trackers - using the Tobii Pro SDK - Tobii X2-60 and TX300 were tested,
• Webcam video and audio recording - using the FFmpeg binary,
• Screencast video recording - using the UScreenCapture utility and ffmpeg binary,
• Keyboard and mouse events logging - using the Windows API hooks,
• External events logging - using the locally hosted REST API and websockets with ASP.NET SignalR.

Selection of devices and data sources is always upon you before starting the session recording.

Description

UXC is primarily designed as a fat client to simplify conducting user studies and experiments in parallel in multiple eye trackers laboratory, such as classroom with 20 workstations equipped with eye trackers at UXI FIIT STUBA. It can also be used for conducting single participant experiments locally because use of UXR group studies management application is optional.

When compared to existing solutions, such as Tobii Pro Studio - our main inspiration, UXC allows the session recording to be controlled in 3 ways:

• Remotely by the study conductor through the UXR management application,
• Locally, using the application user interface, or
• Through the REST and web socket API by a 3rd party application.

Example use cases:

UXC is designed to give us more freedom in conducting user studies both in multiple eye trackers laboratory and individually on a single computer. Here, we give example for main 3 types of experiment session recording.

Locally defined session recording

Basic local session recording on a single workstation with stimuli timeline:

• Define experiment stimuli timeline in the UXC application with multiple steps, for example:
  • Experiment introduction instructions,
  • Eye tracker calibration,
  • Eye tracker data validation,
  • Instructions,
  • User interaction with an application, e.g., a non-scrollable webpage displayed in fullscreen
  • Questionary filling.
• Select devices for data recording: eye tracker, webcam, screencast, keyboard and mouse events.
• Invite participant to the experiment and start the recording - participants follows steps on the stimuli timeline.
• After the recording, take the session data for further analysis in your research.

Remotely controlled session recording

Use UXR web application to sync session recording definitions on multiple workstations with the UXC client:

• Same as in the local recording, define stimuli timeline, perform pilot run of the study locally.
• Share the session recording definition to the UXR group studies management application.
• Schedule session recording in the multiple eye trackers laboratory and invite participants for the expriment.
• Launch UXC client application on the workstations in the laboratory.
• Session recording definition will be synced from the UXR and prepared for recording.
• Briefly describe experiment to the participants, during the recording they will be guided by your instructions on the timeline.
• Start the session recording.
• Experiment stimuli timeline will be played for each participant and they will complete the experiment.
• During the experiment, observe recording status of each participants in the dashboard in the UXR web application.
• When a participants completes the experiment, recording data is synchronized to the UXR web application.
• Download recording data of all participants and experiment sessions from the UXR web application for further analysis in your research.

3rd party app controlled session recording

A 3rd party application, e.g., a web application or desktop application may trigger session recording through the API:

• Launch the UXC application and keep it running in the background.
• Instruct the study participant to visit your website.
• The website will connect to the UXC through the local API and will start the session recording.
• Participant uses your application during the experiment which controls the session recording.
• After the recording, take the session data for further analysis in your research (may be uploaded to the UXR, if available, as well).

Further sections

User manual

• Define session recording
• Stimuli timeline steps definition
• Access data during recording
• Devices and recording data description
• Retrieve session data after the recording
• Upload recording to UXR
• App configuration

Installation manual

• Port reservation and firewall exceptions setup
• HTTPS support tutorial

Development manual

• Build

Project documentation

• Architecture
• Extension points