Eyes on City Heritage: Enhancing Consultations with Accessible Eye-Tracking Data Visualization

One of the important tasks outlined in the Davos Declaration is the inclusive transformation of city centers. Striving for balance requires experts to encourage societies to become actively involved in heritage management. Transparency in the design process is paramount, ensuring that each activity undertaken is efficient and accountable. Diagnosis methods need to be improved; project development and implementation processes need to be streamlined. One idea that combines: new technologies, care for monuments and cooperation is the use of Eye Trackers (ET). Tracking users’ visual behaviors in a cultural context has dual pro-social significance. First, it gathers data based on everyday user interactions, enabling an objective description of a given phenomenon. Second, ET research results should be presented to residents to justify official decisions or explain issues requiring intervention. ET data can be used for the protection of cultural landscapes or for managing areas with high tourist traffic or those under economic pressure . Despite ET development, this social aspect is still rarely publicly discussed. One reason for this may be that expert methods of presenting ET results are difficult for non-professionals to understand. In the course of the research, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a number of imaging techniques applied to architecture was undertaken. The diagnosing of their nature has made it possible to identify aspects that support or undermine the effectiveness of the message. New proposal for presenting ET data combines the advantages and eliminates the disadvantages of the two methods of presenting. The new method was validated in an experiment with 446 participants, demonstrating significant enhancements in message quality and research comprehension.