An Application of Eye-tracking Technology to Fashion Design Education: A Pilot Study on How Women Gaze at Handbags

Abstract

Questionnaire is a conventional approach for fashion designers and educators to survey consumers’ general preferences of products’ appearances; however the precision of survey results remains questionable. The authors proposed an alternative in this pilot study in which five eye trackers were used to record 10 female participants’ eye movement data of gazing at 20 randomly displayed handbag pictures. Six types of Regions of Interest (ROI) of handbags were assigned to understand which regions were more attractive to the participants. The times and duration of fixations showed the degree of ROIs’ attractiveness to the participants. The findings provide persuasive eye-movement evidence of predicting potential female consumers’ gazing behaviors. Textbook editors of fashion design can also add eye-tracking approach to future books. And eye-tracking technology can also help fashion design educators to enhance teaching and students’ learning. Moreover gazing behavior can be broadly considered a form of reading, and the findings of this study further extend the existing knowledge of human reading process.