Assessing eye fixation behaviour through design evaluation of lawi ayam artefact

There is a need for malay cultural product knowledge preservation with the convergence of human science to establish the product knowledge development in innovative culture environment in malaysia. the study uses eye tracking test to understand the user’s cognition and eye behaviour towards the syntactic elements of the cultural artefact (lawi ayam – la) using pre-existent experience. this study was conducted to evaluate the artefact effectiveness and usage efficiency through design preference. findings from eye tracking were used to analyse the element in la artefact that attracts the user attention using the time of first fixation and location of fixations. we concluded that the engrossed area of 3 syntactical components; 1) hilt,2) blade,3) sheath,revealed the factors of ergonomic rapport,anatomical,physical measurement and multi-material usage to obtain results on design preference and artefact effectiveness. we also found that pre-existent experience was recalled and manipulated effectively when defining the criteria of the syntactical component in dynamic accumulative cognition. our findings could guide the on-going cognitive information processing on the cultural artefact to support the design-user knowledge preservation. this study recommends the future cultural and heritage product designer to use the user experience of the particular artefact in the designing process. © 2015 penerbit utm press. all rights reserved.