Harnessing the Visual Salience Effect With Augmented Reality to Enhance Relevant Information and to Impair Distracting Information

Abstract

This study investigated several visualizations, including enhancing relevant information and impairing distracting information, that harnessed the visual salience effect with augmented reality (AR) to assist people in searching for targets. The experiment used a scenario of shopping for food products where participants searched for the target product wearing an AR head-mounted display that presented the visualizations. In addition, the field-dependent (FD) and field-independent (FI) cognitive styles of users were investigated. First, FI participants completed the product selection tasks more quickly than FD participants when using the visualizations of enhancing relevant information but not the visualizations of impairing distracting information. Second, the visualizations of impairing irrelevant information improved the search speed but not the accuracy of FD participants compared to the visualizations of enhancing relevant information. Third, participants perceived a higher clarity of the highlighted items when they were highlighted with a frame rather than an overlay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by a major program supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, Grant [2018AAA0101702].

Notes on contributors

Xin Lei

Xin Lei is an assistant professor in the School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology. She received her Ph.D. degree in Management Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University. Her research interests include human factors engineering, human–robot interaction, and augmented/virtual reality.

Yueh-Lin Tsai

Yueh-Lin Tsai holds a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Tsinghua University. His research interests include human factors engineering, augmented reality, and human–computer interaction.

Pei-Luen Patrick Rau

Pei-Luen Patrick Rau is a full professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University. He received his Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University. His research areas include human factors engineering, human–computer interaction, cross-cultural design, design for older people, human–robot interaction, and service design and evaluation.