The steering wheel is one of the interface components drivers see most when driving a car. Therefore, studies from various perspectives are necessary to increase drivers’ preference for steering wheel design. This study was conducted for two purposes. The first was to derive emotional factors important to preference through emotion analysis of the steering wheel. The second was to investigate the possibility of using gaze movements to evaluate steering wheel preference. Twenty samples were used to assess preferences and emotions about steering wheel design. Subjects evaluated for their design preferences and emotions after viewing the steering wheel image displayed on the monitor for 10 s while wearing an eye tracker. A 5-point Likert scale was used to evaluate preference, and the Semantic Differential method was used to assess emotion. Eight subjects participated in the experiment, and twenty emotional vocabularies were used for emotion evaluation. Factor analysis was performed to derive emotional factors. Heat map entropy for gaze movement was calculated to analyze the relationship between gaze movement and preference. The analysis revealed that the most significant emotional factor in preference was “familiarity.” Furthermore, a positive correlation was found between preference and heat map entropy. This suggests that as preference for the steering wheel design increases, subjects tend to look at the various components more evenly. These findings have practical implications as they can guide emotional design strategies to increase steering wheel preference and provide a novel evaluation method.