Visual Tea: EVES: Vision as Touch

It could be said that the eye plays a relatively passive role in the creation of a design. Our fingers and hands are more capable of drawing, and our voice can be used to communicate our ideas or expressions. Our eyes, however, are a consuming function. They absorb light and allow us to understand, but they do not play an active role. This body of work aims to challenge this conception through a body of design research and self-testing.

By incorporating eye-tracking deeper within these methods, we can begin to discern this technology’s possibilities as a method that encompasses the visual experience as an active input. This thesis is segmented into the two areas of eye tracking utilisation within VR and the design process; passive and active. The passive investigations act as an intermediate phase to understand the extents of eye-tracking as a technology. In comparison, the active investigations act as the culmination and embodiment of this thesis as a whole.

The research will explore the Eye-tracking Voxel Environment Sculptor’s (EVES) development that incorporates eye-tracking as an active design actor. Through the development of EVES, the extent to which eye-tracking can be implemented as an active design medium is investigated. The eye-tracking data garnered from the designer within EVES is directly utilised as an input within a modelling environment to manipulate and sculpt voxels. In addition to modelling input, eye-tracking is also explored in its usability in the Virtual Reality User Interface. Eyetracking is implemented within EVES to this extent to test the limits and possibilities of eye-tracking and the Human-Computer Interface within the realm of Virtual Reality Aided Design.