LAUSR

Abstract The tests presented in the paper stemmed from the claims of a large portion of experts dealing with conservation of monuments, according to which applying eye trackers in the process of architectural heritage management is unnecessary. This gave an impulse for the author to check whether professionals are actually capable of accurate assessment of how different visual alterations affect the perception of a given monument by regular people. Should their predictions reflect the real reactions of an average viewer as registered by means of an eye tracker, such devices would prove redundant as far as the field of management of monuments is concerned. It was therefore decided to compare opinions of polled experts with the results of eye-tracking tests organized for a similarly-sized group of non-professionals. A simple issue was chosen for the test: the experts were supposed to choose the most and the least beneficial – in terms of color – variation of the logo that informs the visitors of the new function of Wroclaw's Four Domes Pavilion. The results of the tests show that professionals do possess the knowledge necessary to assess the most basic issues, since they managed to point at the variants that proved most noticeable and most often neglected. However, they proved statistically incapable of predicting more complex responses of viewers – e.g. the relationship between the color of the logo and the amount of attention paid by viewers to the most important parts of the historical structure.