Teaching Without Telling: What I Saw When I Put on Tobii Glasses X in Sweden
You Don’t Know How You Do Something — Until You Try to Teach It
That realization hit me hard one day while sitting in the passenger seat, trying to teach my cousin how to drive a manual car. What I normally did without thinking — clutch in, check mirrors, glance at the speedo — became weirdly difficult to explain. I had to slow down and notice my process. My body knew what to do, but my mind had forgotten how to describe it.
These glasses do more than record what someone sees. They reveal how someone sees — not just where they look, but how they attend. They turn the invisible mechanics of skilled work into something that can be seen, shared, and shaped. And with the new Tobii Glasses X, this capability is more accessible and powerful than ever.
And that changes everything.
In training, in safety, in sport, people often struggle to teach what has become second nature. We pass on instructions, but we miss the attention. We train behaviors, but overlook the perception underneath.
Tobii Glasses X makes the unconscious conscious.
And once you see how someone sees, everything accelerates: learning, safety, performance, clarity.
That’s what I saw. And I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
Why It Matters for Your Bottom Line
In workplaces like factories, control rooms, in vehicles, and training facilities, most people perform skilled tasks on autopilot. Over time, what once required full attention becomes automatic — and with that automation, something vital is lost.
The attention disappears.
And when that attention goes missing, it doesn’t get passed on.
Traditional training methods often focus on steps and procedures. But they rarely capture how an expert actually sees the task. What do they notice first? What do they glance at and move past? Where do they hesitate?
These micro-decisions — made in the eyes — are often what separate a safe, smooth performance from a risky or inefficient one.
That’s where Tobii Glasses X comes in.
Imagine being able to record an expert’s gaze during a complex task — and then replay that moment side-by-side with a new trainee’s attempt. You’re not just comparing outcomes; you’re comparing perception. You’re showing, not telling.
And it works. Because when you compare perception, you unlock a new dimension of training effectiveness.
At a Pennsylvania metal foundry, H&H Castings used eye tracking to study their most experienced workers during hazardous metal-pouring tasks. By capturing what those experts actually attended to, they created new training videos “through the eyes” of skilled operators. The result? Training time was cut by two full days per employee — saving over 400 hours per year — and safety outcomes improved too.
That’s the power of seeing the unseen.
Glasses X doesn’t just reveal data. It reveals the deeper layer of performance — the attention layer — where real improvement happens.
Game-Changer for Sports and Training
It’s not just industrial settings that benefit from this. The implications for sport, coaching, and physical training are just as profound.
Most athletes, whether elite or emerging, rely on feel. They’re told what to do — where to pass, how to aim, when to shift weight — but often they’re not shown how experts perceive the moment.
Because attention can’t be explained. It has to be seen.
Tobii’s eye tracking glasses, including Glasses X and its predecessor Pro Glasses 3, have been used in a wide range of sports — from golf to football to martial arts — to decode what separates experts from everyone else.
One of the most powerful discoveries in this space is called the “Quiet Eye”: a final, steady fixation just before a movement. Research shows that this split-second moment predicts performance under pressure. In a 2024 study with young golfers, players trained to lengthen their quiet eye performed better under stress, with significantly lower anxiety and greater accuracy than the control group.
It’s not magic. It’s attentional stability — and it’s trainable.
And once an athlete sees the gaze of an expert overlaid on video, something clicks. Pattern recognition happens faster than words. Their own performance recalibrates, not by instruction, but by attention mirroring.
We’ve seen this with Tobii in team sports too. Eye tracking has been used to study shared visual attention during gameplay, letting teams understand how their focus converges — or doesn’t — in fast decision-making moments.
What does that mean outside the locker room?
Imagine showing your trainee in aviation or high-stakes logistics how an expert’s eyes scan under pressure. Or letting a trainee in emergency medicine see exactly what to prioritize in a crisis.
When people can see attention, they absorb the performance behind it.
That’s the leap that Glasses X enables.
Consciousness, Clarity & Presence
Here’s what fascinates me most.
It’s not just about seeing patterns. It’s about seeing yourself.
When someone watches a replay of their own performance — with eye tracking overlaid — something shifts. I’ve seen it happen. There’s a moment of stillness. A pause. Sometimes a breath. It’s not embarrassment. It’s recognition.
They’re not just observing their behavior.
They’re waking up to it.
That moment is more than correction. It’s consciousness.
Tobii Glasses X reveals what’s usually hidden: the layer of awareness beneath action. When people see how they attend — what they miss, what they over-fixate on, what they skip — they begin to relate to their performance differently. It’s no longer about trying harder. It’s about attending better.
Neuroscience calls it intuitive pattern recognition. I call it a mirror.
And mirrors, when true, don’t just reflect. They transform.
Across sport, surgery, and safety-critical fields, this shift from unconscious habit to conscious presence is what enables rapid improvement. A trainee doesn’t need ten repetitions when one clear reflection shows them where their attention failed. It’s fast. It’s permanent. And often, it feels like relief.
Because people don’t want more rules.
They want to feel in flow. In control. Fully here.
That’s what this technology offers. Not more data. Not more pressure.
But a way back to presence — the only place real performance happens.
Built for Real-World Use
What struck me most in Sweden wasn’t just what the Tobii Glasses X could show — it was how effortless it all was.
No calibration.
No lab setup.
No friction between insight and action.
You put them on, start the task, and the data flows — straight to the cloud via a mobile device. And with Glasses Explore, you can replay two videos side by side: expert vs novice, before vs after, version one vs version two.
Glasses Explorer See the Difference. Drive the Change.
With Glasses Explore, the intuitive analysis software for Tobii Glasses X, you can directly compare gaze patterns side-by-side – whether it’s expert vs. novice, or before vs. after training. This visual insight makes targeted improvements clear and immediate.
In training, that’s a game changer.
At Denso, a global automotive supplier, they used Tobii glasses to capture expert assemblers’ gaze patterns. The result? Training time was cut in half. Accuracy improved. Mistakes dropped. The organization didn’t just teach the steps — they transferred the vision behind them.
At Japan Rail, conductors were taught to scan both platform and monitor during departures — a habit that seasoned staff followed but rookies missed. Once trainees saw the gaze of an expert, their scanning behavior transformed. Safety improved. Confidence rose.
That’s the promise of this tech:
Not “more data.”
Not “better tracking.”
Just a clear, frictionless way to show people how they already perform — and where their attention is serving them, or failing them.
Tobii Glasses X brings that visibility to the field, not just the lab.
It meets performance where it actually happens: in motion, in pressure, in real life.
A Message to HR, OHS & Performance Leaders
If you’re responsible for training, safety, or human performance, you already know: the hardest thing to transfer is not knowledge. It’s attention.
Checklists don’t teach awareness.
Procedures don’t reveal perception.
But mistakes — and mastery — both begin with where someone looks.
Tobii Glasses X gives you access to the one thing traditional training can’t deliver:
The invisible logic of expert attention.
It lets you:
Shorten training time by showing trainees what success looks like — through the eyes of someone who’s mastered it.
Reduce human error by exposing blind spots in perception before they become incidents – turning attention into a powerful leading indicator for safety.
Build real confidence by helping people see themselves clearly and correct themselves intuitively.
This isn’t a tool for surveillance.
It’s a mirror — and mirrors transform behavior faster than instruction.
So if you’re looking to elevate your workforce — in a plant, cockpit, hospital, or training center — now is the moment to look deeper.
Let me show you how Tobii Glasses X can work in your environment here in Australia and New Zealand.
Book a short session with me or request a tailored demo. Or, for a deeper dive into the extensive academic and industry evidence supporting these claims, download our comprehensive research summary – it’s all there.
Because once your people can see how they see, everything changes.