Design of an executable specification language using eye tracking

Increasingly complex systems require powerful and easy to understand specification languages. In the course of the design and the extension of an executable specification language based on the Abstract State Machines formalism we recently performed a user survey. The question, how new language features are comprehended, remains unsolved. The main emphasis of this study is on eye gaze behavior of participants learning language features. Eye-tracking experiments were performed in two different countries using a Pupil Labs eye-tracking headset. An example specification and simple comprehension tasks were used as stimuli. The preliminary results of the eye-gaze behaviour analysis reveal that the new language feature was undestood well, but the new abstractions were frequently confused by participants. The foreknowledge of specific programming concepts is crucial how these abstractions are comprehended. More research is needed to infer this knowledge from viewing patterns.