Question

Visual Searches

You probably notice every day that some objects in the environment are easier to notice than other objects. For example, workers at sports stadiums often wear bright yellow shirts, which are very easy to see. While the crowd may blend in together, the workers are prominent and are easy to notice when you want a drink or something to eat. In this assignment, you will further explore how people engage in visual searches and what features of a stimulus make a search easier.

Think of a time when you had to locate someone in a crowd, such as a participant in a parade, a friend in a packed theater, or a runner in a marathon. Based on your experience, respond to the following:

Were you successful in locating the person? What strategy did you use?

Did your search make use of the pop-out effect? How? If not, how might using the pop-out effect have resulted in a successful or quicker search?

Did you conduct a conjunctive search? If yes, how did the number of distracters and features affect your search?

Using the principles thereof, how would you make material in a long e-mail stand out in order to ensure that the reader notices it?

Visual searches are also very important in warnings. Warnings need to stand out from their background. The warning must first be noticed, then read and understood. For example, a stick figure could be performing an ambiguous action and have an "X" through it. You therefore understand that while you are not supposed to perform some action, you do not understand what that action actually is.

Give two examples of a poor warning. Did you understand them? Why did you have difficulties with them? What features could be modified to make the warnings more effective?

Answer 1

ANS A ) Yes-- ,I was successful in locating the person. we took the strategy of visual search which says that it is a goal oriented activity which we witness almost every day in our life ,it involves the active scanning of the environment in order to locate a particular target among distractors Many human functions are carried out & related sush as eye movements, attention, perception ,working memory, decision making & focused vision.

ANS B) NO , to locate a person the pop-out effect does not work because the structure of a person , different way of dressing up , the walking styles ( body language) these factors are not considered in pop out effect.

The pop out effect or phenomena occurs when stimulus that is consisting of different components , but has mostly similar looking objects , but one differing object stands out very noticeably from the other objects in the visual field.

The phenomena in which a unique visual target can rapidly detect among a set of homogeneous disractors . Here we inquire the roles of visual awareness , attention & focused vision inthe process.

By using the pop out effect it has resulted in a quicker search , here we take the example of a highlighter marker - we use the marker in our text books to highlight the parts required with different color marks ie to refer to faster search for a unique target asit easily grabs out the observers attention readily .same is the case here.

This was approved by a research group in MIT. they conducted experiment tomunder stand how prominent pop out effect is.

ANS C) The conjunctive search is perceptual task requiring attention that typically involves an active scan of the visual environment for a particular object among other objects ( distractors).

YES , there were number of distractors & features effected as in the crowd may looked alike but their body language , some persons physical structures did matter . to locate the person.

ANS D) In long e-mails , in order to ensure the notices to the reader, we would high light with bold letter, underline the statement , even use of capital letters in the long text.

ANS E) Warning signs & labels are found every where .Warnings fails to change the people behaviour, the warning goes unnoticed & is some times ignored , the designers focused thier concern on the sensory aspects of warning : as color , shape , location , pictures, text size , but effective warning design depends on the contents in it & the viewer's way of noticing it.

Understanding the warning : Generally the user fails to understand its meaning, some times the message is simply too vauge , sentences poorly constructed, some users as children, older persons & non native speakers may face difficulty in understanding warning,.

Comply with warning : some times the warning states - DO NOT ENTER - the meaning & the reason is not clear . so there are many other some compliances.