52. Where Do We Look? An Eye-Tracking Study of Architectural Features in Building Design

Built environment plays an essential role in shaping the physical, physiological, and psychological human well-being given the fact that we spend more than ¾ of our times indoors. Various studies that investigated the impact of architecture on human health and well-being provided evidences on the influence of architecture with faster recovery in hospitals, better learning in schools, and more productivity in offices under variant configurations of architectural design features. This paper studied the impact of architectural design features (e.g., presence/size of windows, level of natural light and nature view) on human experience in buildings using a mobile eye-tracking solution to capture the subjects’ attention toward various design features. The subjects were exposed to two distinct virtual environments designed with polarizing features, and were instructed to conduct a series of navigational and informational tasks. The eye-tracking results showed that subjects were more focused and had higher attention level in the positively configured virtual environment. The result of the informational task, where the subjects were asked to recall an array of words they just saw in the virtual environment, showed that subjects performed better (i.e., recalled more words) and experienced positive recall (i.e., recalled more positive words) in the positively configured environment.