Integration of Eye-tracking Methods in Visual Comfort Assessments

Discomfort glare, among different aspects of visual discomfort is a phenomenon which is little understood and hard to quantify. As this phenomenon is dependent on the building occupant’s view direction and on the relative position of the glare source, a deeper knowledge of one’s visual behavior within a space could provide pertinent insights into better understanding glare. To address this need, we set up an experiment to investigate dependencies of view direction distribution to a selected range of brightness and contrast distributions in a standard office scenario. The participants were asked to perform a series of tasks including reading, thinking, filling in a questionnaire and waiting. The direction of their view was monitored by recording participants’ eye movements using eye-tracking methods. Preliminary results show that different facade configurations have different effects on the eye movement patterns, with a strong dependency on the performed task. This pilot study will serve as a first step to integrate eye-tracking methods into visual comfort assessments and lead to a better understanding of the impact of discomfort glare on visual behavior.