What Your Eyes Say About Cities: Eye-Tracking and Urban Design

When walking through a neighborhood, what catches your eye? Is it the greenery, a tidy street, or perhaps something less appealing like scattered trash? A study by Tavakoli et al. (2024) used RealEye to reveal how small details in urban scenes can have a big impact on how people feel about their surroundings.

Understanding how people experience urban environments is important for creating better cities. In this study, researchers used eye-tracking, to see how specific neighborhood elements like trash, construction sites, and RVs affect people's perception on different urban scenes.

Eyes on the Problem: What Did RealEye Reveal?

RealEye used participants' webcams to understand where and how they look at different visual stimuli. Unlike traditional eye-tracking methods, which require specialized and expensive equipment, RealEye makes eye-tracking accessible and easy to use remotely. Participants can join from anywhere with a desktop computer, laptop or a smartphone, giving researchers access to more diverse groups of people.

In this study, participants viewed images of various neighborhood conditions. After completing an initial survey about their well-being, they were shown images of four different neighborhood conditions: a clean street (baseline), one with visible trash, another with RVs, and a scene featuring a construction site.

While viewing these images, RealEye tracked their gaze patterns. Participants then completed follow-up surveys about their stress levels, emotional responses, and perceptions of the neighborhoods. By combining eye-tracking data with these surveys, the researchers were able to connect what participants looked at with how they felt.

Key Findings:

The study’s eye-tracking analysis provided valuable insights into how different urban elements captured participants' visual attention and influenced their perceptions:

1. Trash Draws Significant Attention: Areas containing visible trash consistently attracted participants’ gaze. These areas were noticed quickly, with shorter times to first fixation, and held attention for longer durations compared to other parts of the images. This indicates that trash is a visually striking element that dominates attention in urban scenes.
2. Subtle Influence of Construction Sites and RVs: Although construction sites and RVs did not dominate visual focus to the same extent as trash, their presence still impacted participants’ perceptions of the neighborhoods. These conditions were associated with lower ratings of safety and desirability, demonstrating that elements can influence emotional and perceptual responses even without being primary focal points.
3. Central Fixation Bias and Peripheral Impact: Consistent with typical eye-tracking patterns, participants showed a natural tendency to focus on the center of images. However, elements like trash located in peripheral areas still managed to draw significant attention, highlighting their strong visual impact and the ability to shift gaze away from central focal points.

Eye-Tracking for Better Cities

By using eye-tracking to understand visual and emotional responses, planners can target issues like trash management or construction site maintenance to improve urban environments. This study shows that even the smallest features of a neighborhood can leave lasting impressions. With tools like RealEye, we can better understand what shapes those impressions - and use that knowledge to create cleaner, safer, and more inviting cities.

You can run a similar study!

Follow the steps below to start your own experiment with RealEye:

Account Creation and License Activation

1. Go to RealEye Dashboard and create or log in to your account.
2. Purchase the License of your choice (https://www.realeye.io/pricing). If you need any custom adjustments, contact us at contact@realeye.io. We are happy to help!
3. Activate your license by following the instructions in the RealEye License Activation Guide

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Ready to set up your own study? Visit RealEye Support page to learn more and keep us posted on your results! 🚀