**5. Discussion**

The results of the analysis objectively show people's gaze movements on signboards and images of streetscapes through eye movement and surveys. As the subject area is a commercial street, people focus their gaze on buildings and stores to ge<sup>t</sup> information on the stores. In terms of the theory of the Gestalt, the sign in the background of the building becomes a foreground element containing information. Recognition of foreground elements can influence the overall image of the landscape. The result of the research supports this theory. As a result of t-testing by dividing into HSG and LSG based on signboards, significant differences between the two groups were confirmed in all matters such as street satisfaction, signboard satisfaction, aesthetic qualities of streetscape, dynamic, interesting, and complexity (Table 7). This tells us that signboards are the most common streetscape element people see in streetscapes and that streetscape satisfaction, signboard satisfaction, and streetscapes' aesthetic qualities were low in streetscapes with a wide signboard area.

In this analysis, it should be noted that the values of the two variables Dynamic (*p* < 0.01) and Interesting (*p* < 0.1) were high in HSG and were significantly different from the opposite group. Dynamic and Interesting can be seen as essential images to make the commercial street attractive. In particular, these results contrast with the overall lowprofile street satisfaction (*p* < 0.01), signboard satisfaction (*p* < 0.01), and the low-level aesthetic quantities of streetscape (*p* < 0.01) all showing positive possibilities for the effect of signboards. In addition, Table 6 objectively shows that HSG is higher than LSG in the number of Fixation to signboards (*p* < 0.01), Fixation time to signboards (*p* < 0.01), and Revisit of Fixation to signboards (*p* < 0.01) all of which are visual attention factors. It may be thought that the group with a large area of the signboard simply showed a high gaze because the ratio of the area occupied by the signboard in the images was high. However, checking the fixation time compared to the area of the signboard confirmed that the HSG was 0.6 sec and the LSG was 0.34 sec (*p* < 0.01), showing a significant difference to indicate that the fixation time was high not just because the signboard was wide.

Signboards can make visual attention in two ways: First, is the morphological feature. Korean signboards stand out as protruding from the building. This is in the same context as previous studies related to eye-tracking [27,28] that the prominent part of the landscape attracts attention. Second, the signboards have letters, which are the medium of information transmission. People constantly try to attain information through eyesight. In addition, since a form such as a letter requires more visual concentration to understand information, attention to the signboard occurs. This result means that depending on the use of signboards, it is possible to design more attractive commercial streets. For the street to be attractive, it must be able to draw the interest and activity of pedestrians.

On the street, the activity eventually begins with a visual stimulus to pedestrians, which comes from the function of delivering store information to the buyer. Among the scape elements, signboards are important because they are the most intuitive and can deliver a lot of information from sellers to consumers. The external environment of a commercial street that delivers information is important, and to attract and retain shoppers, the importance of a high-quality streetscape must not be overlooked in the contact between the streets and visitors of the commercial district. As mentioned in previous studies [3–6], unorganized signboards are a negative factor in the streetscape and lead to various issues. However, the results of this study indicate that signboards fundamentally increase people's visual participation and are clearly the best physical environmental factor for information delivery. The governmen<sup>t</sup> is also conducting signboard maintenance projects to improve the streetscape and enhance the uniformity of the shape and scale of signboards. For systematic streetscape managemen<sup>t</sup> in the future, detailed guidelines (e.g., scale, color, shape) for signboards will be needed when establishing guidelines such as district unit plans. In addition, signboard design should be based on the function and location of the street and its resulting design.

When evaluating a particular landscape, it is important how it is presented to whom. Over the past half-century, landscape evaluation can be seen as a competition between an approach by design experts and a public-based approach [17,32,33]. This means that the landscape evaluation that comes from the differences in experiences and perspectives of the two groups may lead to different evaluations. In this study, the reflection of group characteristics in streetscape evaluation was minimized by conducting an experiment by mixing urban design majors and the general public. In Table 6, the results of the study also show that, since all variables showed significant differences between HSG and LSG, streetscape evaluation was performed without significant differences between experts and ordinary people.

However, this study has some limitations. First, this is an experimental study based on photographs. There may be a difference between the three-dimensional image seen outside the study and the images in the study viewed as photographs. Second, the angle of the shooting was taken in the middle of the street. When people walk, they move their heads and look at the streetscape from various angles. However, this study used images taken from the center of the street as a photographic experiment. If research is conducted to supplement these limitations using VR utilization or wearable eye-tracker in the future, more accurate and detailed implications may be presented in streetscape design.
