基于视觉运动轨迹下的建筑常识
Here's What You Can Learn About Architecture from Tracking People's Eye Movements

由专筑网李韧，韩平编译

本文最初发表于Common Edge，标题为“视觉路径揭示人们对建筑的审视规则”。

虽然许多建筑师长期遵循“形式追随功能”的至理名言，然而“形式追随大脑”却也许是今天的广告商和汽车制造商所信奉的条例，他们运用了多种高科技技术测试出人们内心的真实想法，然后依此为基准来设计真正满足需求的产品。

例如EEG（electroencephalogram）等生物识别工具能够有效地测试人类脑电波，面部情绪分析软件能够时刻掌控我们的情绪，眼球追踪仪可以记录我们无意识的眼球运动，这些常见的高科技产品大多运用于医疗部门以及心理治疗场所。但是近期，你也许在伍斯特理工学院和位于马萨诸塞州的Worcester Polytechnic机构（WPI）也能体验到这些仪器的神奇作用。

当你开始将诸如眼部追踪仪等设备用于建筑领域时，会发生什么奇特的事情？

事实上，在2015年这些设备已经在4个城市（纽约、波士顿、萨默维尔和德文斯、MA）进行试运作，我们认为这些技术对于建筑设计也具有重大的革新作用，首先，这让建筑师们可以预测到人类的反应，甚至能够了解人们是否想要环绕参观一座新建筑，亦或是对这座建筑提不起兴趣。（2016年6月版《Planning Magazine》的封面故事就描述了许多关于眼部追踪仪的多项研究。）

总之我们相信，如果你能够了解到人们对于建筑的看法，你对于建筑的观念也将大有改变。因此，下文罗列了三种来自眼部追踪建筑的重要发现。

This article was originally published by Common Edge as "Game-Changing Eye-Tracking Studies Reveal How We Actually See Architecture."
While many architects have long clung to the old “form follows function” adage, form follows brain function might be the motto of today’s advertisers and automakers, who increasingly use high-tech tools to understand hidden human behaviors, and then design their products to meet them (without ever asking our permission!)
Biometric tools like an EEG (electroencephalogram) which measures brain waves; facial expression analysis software that follows our changing expressions; and eye-tracking, which allows us to record “unconscious” eye movements, are ubiquitous in all kinds of advertising and product development today—beyond the psychology or medical departments where you might expect to see them. These days you’ll also find them installed at the behavioral research and user experience labs in business schools such as American University in DC and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts.
What happens when you apply a biometric measure like eye-tracking to architecture? More than we expected...
Indeed, after running four pilot-studies looking at buildings in both city and suburb (New York City, Boston, Somerville and Devens, MA) since 2015, we think these technologies stand to revolutionize our understanding of how architecture impacts people and, in a first, allow us to predict human responses, including things like whether people will want to linger outside a new building or, within fractions of a second, choose to flee. (There’s more on our first eye-tracking study in the cover story of Planning Magazine, June, 2016.)
In sum, we believe once you “see” how we look at buildings, you’ll never look at architecture the same way again. So, here are three unexpected findings gathered from eye-tracking architecture:


1、人们常常会忽视留白立面

通过眼部追踪，我们会发现研究成果出乎意料。你会发现，人们会自动忽视留白的部分，例如建筑的白色外墙，亦或是通体重复的玻璃幕墙。这是我们的大脑从古至今的进化结果，因为平淡且不具特色的事务很少会引起人们的注意，换句话说，现代建筑的极简风格还无法改变人们大脑中枢神经上亿年来形成的习惯，因此就人类大脑的习惯来说，大面积的留白并不足以吸引眼球。

你可以从上文的研究中发现这个特性，以纽约Stapleton图书馆为例，研究者运用了两种不同的立面，右图的立面上开设有一个窗户，而左图而保留空白，明黄色的圆圈代表了约15秒的视觉固定点，圆圈之间的连线则代表视线的移动过程，在每次测试中，人们的视线都会无意识地移动45次，这样的移动并不具有目的性。在没有窗户的左图中，人们对于建筑的影响并不深刻，而右图的测试结果却并非如此。研究者将多个研究数据整合如下图所示，在图中，高亮显示的部分便是人们的视线聚集点，可以看出，以多开窗的方式能够有效地吸引人们的注意，多次实验之后，研究者发现人们会一遍又一遍地扫视建筑开窗较多的部分，而那些留白区域，则很少有人会刻意注意到。

1. People Ignore Blank Facades
Run even one eye-tracking study and this result will hit you on the head like a ton of bricks. Put it in red lights: People don’t tend to look at big blank things, or featureless facades, or architecture with four-sides of repetitive glass. Our brains, the work of 3.6 billion years of evolution, aren’t set up for that. This is likely because big, blank, featureless things rarely killed us. Or, put another way, our current modern architecture simply hasn’t been around long enough to impact behaviors and a central nervous system that’s developed over millennia to ensure the species’ survival in the wild. From the brain’s visual perspective, blank elevations might as well not be there.
You can see this in the study above. It shows two views of NYC’s Stapleton library, one with existing windows, at right and, at left, one without them (a photoshopped version we made of the same facade). The bright yellow dots represent “fixations” that show where eyes rest as they take in the scene in a 15-second interval; the lines between are the “saccades” that follow the movement between fixations. On average, viewers moved their eyes 45 times per testing interval, with little to no conscious effort or awareness on their part, and no direction on ours. In the image at left, without windows, test-takers more-or-less ignored the exterior, save for the doorway. This is not the case with the image at right. The photos below show heat maps which aggregate the viewing data of multiple individuals. These maps, glowing brightest where people looked most, suggest how much fenestration patterns matter: they keep people fixating on the facade, providing areas of contrast the eyes innately seek and then stick to. Again and again, our studies found that buildings with punched windows (or symmetrical areas of high contrast) perennially caught the eye, and those without, did not.

2、固态驱动探索

为什么说人们无意识状态下所产生的举动至关重要呢？这是一个终极大问题，在研究过程中，我们发现了这么一个科学现象，那便是“固态驱动探索”，并且也发现，人们的潜意识代表着人们的日常习惯，例如人类目光的焦点就代表着无意识的输出，这决定了人们的注意力将至于何处。从心理学的角度来说，人的无意识行为往往代表了其内心深层次的直接意识与决定。这也不难理解为什么那么多汽车制造商和广告商通过这种方式来了解人们内心深处的想法，因为他们想了解客户的关注点，这样才能对症下药，确保发出的广告能够像预期那样吸引到人们的注意，换句话说，他们想控制人们的无意识行为，最终获得满意的结果。

2. Fixations Drive Exploration
Why does it matter where people look without conscious control? That’s the ultimate question. In the course of our research, we picked up a cognitive science mantra, “fixations drive exploration,” and learned that unconscious hidden habits, such as where our eyes “fixate” without conscious input, determines where our attention goes and that’s hugely significant. Why? Because unconscious fixations in turn direct conscious activity and behavior. No wonder Honda and GM use this technology. No wonder advertisers of all stripes do too. They want to know where we look so they can manage our behavior, making certain an ad grabs attention as intended, before it’s released. They want to manage our unconscious behavior so they get the conscious outcome they desire from our brains, (without having to lift a metaphorical finger!)

至于建筑，眼部追踪可以帮助了解在当下瞬间人们的目光聚集点，现在，让我们以“固态驱动探索”来分析一下以上场景，左图是美国马萨诸塞州东部城市萨默维尔的Davis广场，右侧是研究者经过PS处理的图像版本。在过去的一年中，研究者邀请超过300个人来这里参加讲座，然后以此来分析，人们在等候友人时更愿意站在哪一堵墙的前方，最终的结果令人惊讶，即使没有过多的交流，人们也选择的是同一个地点，那便是有壁画的墙体前。

这是为什么呢？眼部追踪结果为我们揭示了答案。下图直接表明了人们对于有壁画的墙体更加关注，因为这会让人们产生一种依赖感，如果没有这样的壁画，人们会产生无所适从的焦虑，这也决定了大多数人们不会选择在空白墙体前等候好友。这便是“固态驱动探索”对于广告和建筑的巨大作用。

And what about architecture?  Eye tracking can help us untangle the fraction-of-a-second experiences that drive our actions around buildings in ways we may never realize. To see how our “fixations drive exploration,” let’s take the scene above; at left is Davis Square in Somerville, MA, a dense residential district near Cambridge, home to many colleges and businesses. At right, the image shows a photoshopped version of the same scene. In the past year we’ve asked more than 300 people at lectures where they’d rather stand and wait for a friend: in front of the blank building or in front of the building with the colorful Matisse-like mural. Amazingly—without even talking with one another—everyone picked the same place, standing in front of the mural.
Why? Turns out eye tracking suggests some interesting answers. The heat map below indicates that the mural provides fixation points to focus on; these give us a type of attachment we like and seem to need to feel at our best; without these connections people apparently don’t know where to go—they get anxious—and so won’t select the blanker site. Amazing the power of fixations to drive exploration whether in ads or architecture. (I guess it has to be this way since we only have one brain.)

3、人的从众心理

最后，同时也极具讽刺意味的是建筑的眼部追踪研究揭示了人类与建筑之间并没有实质上的联系，相反它也暗示了人类多少有些从众的心态。我们是社会的一份子，我们的感知相互之间都具有关联性。换句话说，人的行为可以吸引到其他人。眼部追踪研究也反复证实了这一点。建筑确实重要，但从人类大脑的角度来看，无论身处何方，人类思维更为重要。

同样地，研究者将眼部追踪技术应用在波士顿圣三一教堂考普利广场（建于1877年）和汉考克大厦（建于1976年）的建筑设计研究上。在2015年，这座塔楼设置了一个艺术装置——一个男人站在一艘漂浮的船上。猜猜此时的人们注视着哪里？

如果你认为人们的目光多聚集于艺术装置，那你猜对了。虽然理查德松式的罗曼斯风格建筑自有其独特的吸引力，甚至还有些现代主义的影子，但当其涉及到人体时，这便会更加吸引人们的注意力，否则，人们便很少会去注意到这座通体透明的玻璃外墙建筑，再出名的建筑大师也无法改变人脑36亿年来形成的习惯。

因此我们得出的结论便是，如果我们了解自己，那我们便能够更好地做自己的主人。每个人都是进化的产物，眼部追踪建筑研究揭示了人的思维仍然受传统的影响。充分考虑以人为本理念的建筑通常也包含了诸多历史元素。就我们该如何与世界相处这个问题而言，我们的祖先很早就给出了答案，那便是敏锐地发现高度的对比和其他生物的存在，这些是祖先教给我们的生存秘诀，在短期内这些特质并不会有所改变。

因此我们会发现人们的目光会聚焦在高空中的一个人行剪影中，如果你想要细究其原因，那真的没有意义，除非你充分地了解人类发源史和达尔文进化论。

特别感谢波士顿学院以人为本设计机构、德文斯企业委员会、Justin B. Hollander教授、Hanna Carr ‘20、塔夫茨大学、Dan Bartman、萨默维尔规划部的协助与支持。同时感谢iMotions、3M VAS及其员工的共同合作。

图片：Ann Sussman

3. People Look for People, Continually
And finally, ironically, the most important thing eye-tracking studies of architecture revealed to us had nothing to do with buildings at all. Instead it suggested how much our brain is hardwired to look for and see people. We’re a social species and our perception is relational. In other words, it’s specifically designed to take in others. Eye-tracking studies bear this out, repeatedly. Yes, architecture matters, but from our brain’s perspective, people matter more. No matter where they are.
We saw this eye tracking Boston’s famous Copley Square with its historic Trinity Church (c. 1877) and equally historic Hancock Tower (c.1976), which recently changed hands and is now called 200 Clarendon (see images above). In 2015, the tower featured a temporary art installation of a man standing on a floating barge. Guess where people looked?
If you chose the small silhouette of the guy, you’re right. Richardsonian Romanesque has its appeal, and there may be die-hard modernists out there, but when it comes to human bodies, that’s what your brain wants you to focus on. (See reddest heat map.) That’s where people went to look; otherwise, they barely gave the glass building a glance; it simply can’t provide fodder for focus from a brain’s 3.6 billion-year-old perspective.
If there’s one all-encompassing conclusion, it’s this: we can only hope to save ourselves if we know what we are. Evolution is real and we’re artifacts of the process. Eye-tracking architecture shows ancient algorithms directing us even though we can’t perceive them. Architecture that’s humane engages our animal nature acknowledging our remarkable history. In terms of how we take in the world, our ancestors learned the hard way to immediately look for areas of high contrast and other creatures, particularly faces, and they passed the life-saving traits on to us. These behaviors will not go away soon.
So we find ourselves today, modern man, riveted to looking at the silhouette of someone outside the 35th floor of a high-rise. It truly makes no sense, unless you consider where we came from and the struggle for survival that made us.
Thanks to Boston’s Institute for Human-Centered Design, The Devens Enterprise Commission, Prof Justin B. Hollander and Hanna Carr ‘20, Tufts University and Dan Bartman, City of Somerville Planning Department for invaluable assistance and research support. For game-changing technological tools many thanks to iMotions and 3M VAS and their staff for making this type of research possible.


作者简介：

Ann Sussman是一位作家、建筑师和生物研究员。她的书《Cognitive Architecture》、以及和Justin B Hollander合著的《Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment》获得了2016年EDRA研究奖。更多的信息可以访问网站annsussman.com，以及她的博客geneticsofdesign.com。

Janice M Ward也是一位作家、设计师、博客写手以及STEM活动倡导者。她和Ann Sussman合著了《Planning Magazine》2016年6月版的封面故事“在城市环境与建筑设计中运用眼部追踪及生物工具”。

Ann Sussman is an author, architect and biometric researcher. Her book Cognitive Architecture, Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment (2015), co-authored with Justin B Hollander, won the EDRA award for research in 2016. More info at: annsussman.com and her blog, geneticsofdesign.com. Janice M Ward is a writer, designer, blogger and STEM advocate. She and Ann Sussman co-authored the cover story in Planning Magazine's 2016 June issue: using eye tracking and other biometric tools to help planners shape built environments. More info at acanthi.com and geneticsofdesign.com.


出处：本文译自www.archdaily.com/，转载请注明出处。