Query participant's device

[jwright8]

Is there any way to query the participant's device? For example, can we play audio and automatically determine whether they used headphones or computer speakers? Or can we automatically determine whether they used a touchpad, touchscreen, or external mouse to respond?

[Ting]

This is a good question, and the answer is a bit complex. There is some information that we can get: what browsers they are using, what the screen resolution is, and what the participant's local time is, etc. However, most hardware specs, like those you listed, are not (yet). This is because modern browsers are treated as "sandboxes" for security reasons. Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, etc purposefully hide hardware-level information from web apps to prevent malicious actions that a rogue app may take.

That being said, Google is working on a proprietary API that will expose more hardware details. This is unfortunately a controversial plan and opposed by many in the field, for very good reasons. We are monitoring these developments.

In other words, unfortunately, such hardware-level information cannot be obtained at the time being. Sorry for the disappointing news.

[atfrederiksen]

This is a good question, and the answer is a bit complex. There is some information that we can get: what browsers they are using, what the screen resolution is, and what the participant's local time is, etc. However, most hardware specs, like those you listed, are not (yet). This is because modern browsers are treated as "sandboxes" for security reasons. Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, etc purposefully hide hardware-level information from web apps to prevent malicious actions that a rogue app may take.

That being said, Google is working on a proprietary API that will expose more hardware details. This is unfortunately a controversial plan and opposed by many in the field, for very good reasons. We are monitoring these developments.

In other words, unfortunately, such hardware-level information cannot be obtained at the time being. Sorry for the disappointing news.

[Ting]

What's the device and operating system that your collaborator is using? It doesn't matter whether the mouse is wireless or wired, but if the device is touch-primary (as it self-declares), then you'll see the message unfortunately. For example, an iPad may do that, also some other touch-capable devices (but not all).

We don't think we'd like to remove this detection mechanism, because, as a whole, it very effectively prevents participants from not following directions. In a sense, what your collaborator experienced is a good thing - we want to make sure that not only a mouse is present, it's also IMPOSSIBLE to use touch at the same time. Because participants, when given the convenience of touch, will touch instead of using a mouse in most cases.

As a platform, we'd rather introduce the inconvenience of asking the participants to use a different device, rather than researchers finding missing mouse tracking data after the fact (although some marginal cases may still slip through).

Hope this helps!

[atfrederiksen]

What's the device and operating system that your collaborator is using? It doesn't matter whether the mouse is wireless or wired, but if the device is touch-primary (as it self-declares), then you'll see the message unfortunately. For example, an iPad may do that, also some other touch-capable devices (but not all).

We don't think we'd like to remove this detection mechanism, because, as a whole, it very effectively prevents participants from not following directions. In a sense, what your collaborator experienced is a good thing - we want to make sure that not only a mouse is present, it's also IMPOSSIBLE to use touch at the same time. Because participants, when given the convenience of touch, will touch instead of using a mouse in most cases.

As a platform, we'd rather introduce the inconvenience of asking the participants to use a different device, rather than researchers finding missing mouse tracking data after the fact (although some marginal cases may still slip through).

Hope this helps!

[Ting]

Outdated browser version? This seems to be an idiosyncratic issue. Our mousetracking template study seems to be working fine.

If you can provide the device, operating system, browser and its version, we can try to replicate this issue on our end.