Abstract
This study has carried out scanning tests in order to figure out the features of scanning search by sex of space users, with the result of which the validity of data has been estimated. In this research, the scanning patterns were set up for verifying the typology of scanning paths and then the reason for determining scanning paths and the validity of estimation method were reviewed. Since the observation features depends on sex, the analysis of visual activities for acquiring any information in a space will reveal the intention and purpose of space users. The findings by analyzing the features of scanning pattern by sex which were found at the determination of scanning patterns can be defined as the followings. First, for estimating the process of space-information search, the movement distance at each point of continuative-observation data from the angle of eye-movement has been extracted, on the ground of which the fixation and movement of eye have been defined for the establishment of scanning-cut characteristics. Second, the scanning times were estimated for the extraction of effective observation data that would be used for comparative analysis, which showed that men had more data (3,398.2/64.4%) than women (2,998.2/55.6%). This enables the acknowledgment that the scanning cut of men was relatively less, which indicates that men will acquire more information on space than women in the process of observing any space. Third, men's scanning times (58.0 times/2.02 seconds) were less than those of women (71.9 times/1.39 seconds) while the scanning time of the former was longer than that of the latter, which shows the feature that it takes longer for men than women in scanning while the scanning times of the former is less than those of the latter. Fourth, the observation features can be determined that the combination of this result with the predominance character by sex for a general viewpoint to be employed indicates that while men employ mixed-scanning for observation activities to acquire space-information spending for longer time, women, by concentrated-scanning, focus on a single point for shorter time or stay at one location for a considerably long time for space-information acquirement.