Use of Eye-tracking in Artworks to Understand Information Needs of Visitors
Taeha Yi, Mi Chang, Suk‐Joo Hong, Ji–Hyun Lee
Abstract
This study examined which accompanying information elements were noticed by visitors while they were looking at artworks, using eye-tracking experiments. First, we conducted an online survey to grasp the types of information that visitors wanted to know, and five elements were obtained. Second, we collected information on these five elements through interviews with one artist. Third, eye-tracking experiments were performed with semi-structured interviews. We set the information delivery media as follows: wall and mobile texts as commonly used in art museums. The results showed that patterns of eye movement of visitors were different according to the information delivery media. Also, we found that there was a correlation between the results of the eye-tracking experiment and visitor interest. This study has limitations in that it is an experiment limited to small sample size and artwork genre; however, it is meaningful in that it was able to grasp the information needs of visitors through eye-tracking.