Ergonomics is everywhere design. Aim of each architect should be the optimization and efficiency of the proposed design solutions, the correct diagnosis and meet the needs of users, the implementation of priority investment objectives as a business, future thinking in terms of sensitivity to changes in object and to anticipate all the consequences of their decisions. In today's world, the basis of all activities is knowledge. Development of the Internet led easy access and transfer of knowledge. At the same time excess and information overload can cause confusion. It is essential to proper diagnosis, which knowledge is valuable and useful. The built environment and its users are a direct source of knowledge for design. In order to acquire this knowledge be used qualitative research (quality: technical, functional, organizational, behavioral, economic), observation, surveys, interviews, way-finding, participations, etc. On the basis of 15 years of experience in the field of qualitative research conducted in many places, their own projects and in the classroom with students of architecture, the authors have developed their own methods of knowledge acquisition from the built environment. These methods are mainly based on a simplified POE (Post Occupancy Evaluation) adapted to Polish conditions. The paper presents selected research projects in the field of architecture conducted at the Faculty of Architecture at the Silesian University of Technology. The Faculty has been involved in quality analyses of the built environment since the nineties of the twentieth century.

This paper discusses the results of a study of the quality of space in hospital buildings in the context of solutions facilitating the orientation of patients in the space of the Outpatient Clinic, in the clinic building complex of the National Institute of Oncology in Gliwice (NIO). By combining qualitative research methods with a syntactic description of the space, the aim was to record the experiences of users and define objective design guidelines for the new visual identity system. Completed research walks testing selected patient routes in the clinic space made it possible to identify decision points as nodal spaces in the wayfinding system. On the other hand, the use of the Space Syntax method allowed the identification of key areas for signage visibility and orientation in space. The proposed method can be adapted for various types of public buildings, providing a flexible framework for pre-design research and analysis. Furthermore, the results show the potential of linking qualitative research methods with simulation-based user participation and digital tools for in-depth pre-design analyses.

The use of eye tracking technology in architectural research is innovative and allows for experiments to be conducted in the field of perception of the built environment in various aspects and scales. Designers are interested in improving the quality of proposed solutions in the field of interior design, wayfinding, and perception of the urban environment. The researcher wants to obtain measurable results that can indicate the direction of development of the proposed concepts based on the evaluation of existing solutions as well as those in the design phase. In order to effectively carry out experiments using the described technology, it is necessary to be familiar with the available research tools, techniques for conducting experiments, and the interpretation of results and their implementation in subsequent iterations of experiments or project implementations. Therefore, the author decided to prepare a review article on available technologies and research tools supported by eye tracking technology and its implementation in research in the field of architecture and urban planning. His own experience with attempts to use the tool made available for research in the form of THE EYE TRIBE with proprietary software written by professor Paweł Kasprowski (SUT - Department of Applied Computer Science, Faculty of Automation, Electronics and Computer Science ), became a pretext for seeking answers to questions concerning the diversity of eye movement recorders available on the market and their integration with software for processing and interpreting observation data. The questions raised in the article concern the cost of purchasing the system, its ease of use, and the level of integration with popular virtual environment modeling tools used to simulate spaces designed by architects and researchers of built environment perception. The fundamental issue from the researcher's point of view is whether it is possible to design and launch a research station without specialist knowledge in disciplines other than the leading ones (architecture and urban planning). If not, who should be involved in the research team in order to achieve the expected results? The final conclusions include a description of the difficulties associated with the use of the tools described and recommendations on how to organize the process of preparing and conducting experiments/research.