Towards capturing focal/ambient attention during dynamic wayfinding

Krukar J, Mavros P, Hoelscher C

Research article in edited proceedings (conference) | Peer reviewed

Abstract

This work-in-progress paper reports on an ongoing experiment in which mobile eye-tracking is used to evaluate different wayfinding support systems. Specifically, it tackles the problem of detecting and isolating attentional demands of building layouts and signage systems in wayfinding tasks. The coefficient K has been previously established as a measure of focal/ambient attention for eye-tracking data. Here, we propose a novel method to compute coefficient K using eye-tracking from virtual reality experiments. We detail challenges associated with transforming a two-dimensional coefficient K concept to three-dimensional data, and the debatable theoretical equivalence of the concept after such a transformation. We present a preliminary implementation to experimental data and explore the possibilities of the method for novel insight in architectural analyses.