

Show HN: ResMaps – See who is viewing your resume and what they are looking at - sanmeetkanhere
https://www.resmaps.com

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erickookoo
Here are some examples of some of the heatmaps that were generated today from
people looking at my portfolio page. In the first two you can definitely see
specific things that the viewer was looking at - again based on cursor
movement: [http://i.imgur.com/sa0r3hG.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/sa0r3hG.jpg)
[http://i.imgur.com/698ia8K.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/698ia8K.jpg)

That said, there were also a lot of users who simply scrolled quickly down the
page. It's a lot more difficult to tell where these users paid attention to.
In this specific case, they probably didn't really read anything in particular
and just quickly scrolled down to see what was there:
[http://i.imgur.com/61nkjNz.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/61nkjNz.jpg)

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minimaxir
> _ResMaps lets you to create a sleek web resume that captures where viewers
> spend the most time looking._

What viewers are looking at is _not_ the same as what hiring managers are
looking at, which may make the results misleading in a real-world scenario.

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didgeoridoo
I'm much more skeptical about the "use mouse movements as a proxy for eye
gaze" part. For non-interactive elements like text blocks, cursor location has
a NEGATIVE correlation with eye gaze (because users will often move the cursor
out of the way of what they're reading). I would completely disregard any data
that comes out of this.

One way to potentially address this problem: dim out most of the page except a
200-300px diameter circle where the cursor is located. Force the user to use
the cursor as a "spotlight" so they can read the resume. This allows you to
see where they look & what catches/holds their attention. It's a wholly
unnatural way to read, but should serve your particular purpose.

~~~
erickookoo
You're correct about users not hovering over exactly where they are reading in
order not to block their view with the cursor, but studies have shown that
people do position their cursor very close to or just below where they are
actually reading (there are, however, also other usage patterns such as the
scroller who simply leaves his cursor in one place and scrolls down the page).

We've allowed users to create links to their projects in order to make would
normally be non-interactive text blocks on a resume into something clickable.

There is plenty of literature that correlates eye gaze to cursor movement
(e.g.
[http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl...](http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=o8oJ6s4AAAAJ&citation_for_view=o8oJ6s4AAAAJ:HoB7MX3m0LUC))

~~~
mjhouse
Something I thought of coming home from a birthday dinner this afternoon:

In order to get a better idea of what the viewer is focusing on, you might
consider going to a vertical gradient instead of a pointer heat-map.

Most people don't read to the bottom of the page before they start scrolling.
Imagine two lines on the screen- the bottom line is the point at which the
viewer will begin to scroll. The top line is the point that the viewer wants
their reading area to be located. The space in between the lines is your
"target" area.

As the viewer scrolls down the page, you could average their scrolling speed,
and increment the intensity for that area of the heat map only when they slow
their scrolling speed drastically, or go back over an area.

Just from paying attention to my own scrolling habits, I think the top line
would probably be just above the horizontal center of the screen, and the
bottom line would probably be about an inch down. You could do some testing to
find the average line positions.

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genericone
Any plan to allow PDF resumes, or is there a technical hurdle at the moment?
Most people keep their resume as a word or latex document which they then
render into a PDF file, reentering this information one form field at a time
can become a bit tedious.

Besides the convenience factor of not having to reenter information, PDF
resumes have layouts and fonts which play into reader perceptions (rightly or
wrongly). I will argue that the information layout is just as important as the
information itself, and affects "where" and "what" resume readers look at
first/second/.../never. Please consider allowing PDF resume viewing and
analysis.

~~~
erickookoo
Yeah, this is something we've definitely thought of implementing. Definitely
agree with you that some people have awesome-looking resumes that they have
spent a lot of time formatting (we both graduated with HCI degrees, so we've
seen a lot of amazing resumes from UX and graphic designers).

But yeah, mostly technical hurdles at this point. Maybe someday. =)

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sanmeetkanhere
Hi HN! We use mouse movements as a proxy for eye gaze to show you what
visitors have been looking at on your resume. Give it a spin and let us know
what you think.

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cr3ative
"Please resend as a PDF or Word Document."

