I am looking into ways to gain more insight for how people use the tools I build.  Short of having a physical user group for a/b testing, are there some faster and cheaper solutions out there such as tools to gauge eye tracking or mouse tracking, or whatever else can give effective insight into the user's experience?Also, is using mechanical-turk-like solutions helpful for UX?Thanks!
What are some helpful and free UX tools for eye-tracking and mouse-tracking, etc
usability;ux
I've used click heat before: http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html It is a self hosted, open source, PHP based heatmap system you can use for free. It works well for click tracking. As far as eye tracking goes, unless you have hardware, you are looking at mouse hover tracking. I think clicktail has it. You could use the mechanical turk as well, but I have no experience with it.Another option could be one of the pay for testing sites out there. A quick google turns up: http://www.usertesting.com/, http://www.feedbackarmy.com/, etc... I've seen ones where they record what the person is saying, and the actions they are taking and they can be effective for a nice usability overview.