Eyejam: a gaze-controlled musical interface

Gaze-based interfaces use eye trackers as input devices to substitute, for example, the keyboard and mouse of a conventional graphical user interface. For people with severe motor disabilities, gaze is one of the few alternatives to interact with the world. The most common gaze interaction paradigm is called dwell-time, where keys are selected using fixations longer than a certain "dwell". Though simple, this mechanism does not permit the selection of keys at precise moments, a requirement to play music and certain video games. In this paper we introduce two gaze interaction techniques that overcome this limitation. The first is an extension of the dwell-time, where selection is triggered when the gaze exits the focused key. The second is based on the Context Switching paradigm, that uses saccades for selection instead of fixations. Results of a user experiment show that the Context Switching paradigm permits a more accurate timing control while playing music at 45 and 70 beats per minute.