An Eye-Tracking Study to Identify the Most Observed Features in a Physical Prototype of a Tiny House

DS 116: Proceedings of the DESIGN2022 17th International Design Conference

Year: 2022
Editor: Mario Štorga, Stanko Škec, Tomislav Martinec, Dorian Marjanović
Author: Aurora Berni, Stefania Altavilla, Laura Ruiz-Pastor, Chiara Nezzi, Yuri Borgianni
Series: DESIGN
Institution: Free University of Bozen|Bolzano, Italy
Section: Human Behaviour and Design Creativity
Page(s): 841-850
DOI number: https://doi.org/10.1017/pds.2022.86
ISSN: 2732-527X (Online)

Abstract

This exploratory work aims to understand which elements of a building mostly attract visitors’ attention. An experiment was conducted to allow participants to visit a prototype tiny house while wearing eye-tracking glasses. Identified gazed elements of the prototype were selected and the corresponding dwell times used as variables. The limited dwell times on structural elements show that they can be easily overshadowed by other features present in the building. This leads to a design problem when the novelty and the quality of a new product, markedly a building, reside in the materials used.

Keywords: human-centred design, interaction design, architectural design, eye tracking