Exploring the effects of group size and display configuration on visual search

ABSTRACT

Visual search is the subject of countless psychology studies in which people search for target items within a scene. The bulk of this literature focuses on the individual with the goal of understanding the human perceptual system. In life, visual search is performed not only by individuals, but also by groups -- a team of doctors may study an x-ray and a team of analysts may study a satellite photograph. In this paper, we examine the issues one should consider when searching as a group. We present the details of an experiment designed to investigate the impact of group size on visual search performance, and how different display configurations affected that performance. We asked individuals, pairs, and groups of four people to participate in a baggage screening task in which these teams searched simulated x-rays for prohibited items. Teams conducted these searches on single monitors, a row of four monitors, and on a single horizontal display. Our findings suggest that groups commit far fewer errors in visual search tasks, although they may perform slower than individuals under certain conditions. The interaction between group size and display configuration turned out to be an important factor as well.

REFERENCES

• 1: Robert Ball , Chris North, Effects of tiled high-resolution display on basic visualization and navigation tasks, CHI '05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 02-07, 2005, Portland, OR, USA [doi>10.1145/1056808.1056875]
• 2: Biederman, I. and Gerhardstein, P.C. Recognizing depth-rotated objects: Evidence and conditions for three-dimensional viewpoint invariance. Journal of Experiment Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 19. 1162--1182.
• 3: Czerwinski, M., Smith, G., Regan, T., Meyers, B., Robertson, G. and Starkweather, G., Toward Characterizing the Productivity Benefits of Very Large Displays. in Proceedings of Human-Computer Interaction -- INTERACT 2003, (Zürich, Switzerland, 2003), 9--16.
• 4: Darley, J.M., and Latane, B., Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8. 377--383.
• 5: Jonathan Grudin, Partitioning digital worlds: focal and peripheral awareness in multiple monitor use, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.458-465, March 2001, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/365024.365312]
• 6: Hemera Images. http://www.hemera.com/
• 7: Dugald Ralph Hutchings , Greg Smith , Brian Meyers , Mary Czerwinski , George Robertson, Display space usage and window management operation comparisons between single monitor and multiple monitor users, Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces, May 25-28, 2004, Gallipoli, Italy [doi>10.1145/989863.989867]
• 8: Janis, I. Groupthink. Psychology Today, 5(6). 43.
• 9: Jolicoeur, P. The time to name disoriented natural objects. Memory & Cognition, 13. 289--303.
• 10: Lawson, R., Humphreys, G. and Jolicoeur, P. The Combined Effects of Plane Disorientation and Foreshortening on Picture Naming: One Manipulation or Two? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 26 (2). 568--581.
• 11: Mainwaring, S. D. Tversky, B., Ohgishi, M. and Schiano, D. J. Descriptions of simple spatial scenes in English and Japanese. Spatial Cognition and Computation, 3. 3--42.
• 12: Chris North , Ben Shneiderman, Snap-together visualization: a user interface for coordinating visualizations via relational schemata, Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces, p.128-135, May 2000, Palermo, Italy [doi>10.1145/345513.345282]
• 13: Jonathan C. Roberts , Computing Laboratory , University of Kent , Uk, On Encouraging Multiple Views for Visualisation, Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Visualisation, p.8, July 29-31, 1998
• 14: Kathy Ryall , Clifton Forlines , Chia Shen , Meredith Ringel Morris, Exploring the effects of group size and table size on interactions with tabletop shared-display groupware, Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 06-10, 2004, Chicago, Illinois, USA [doi>10.1145/1031607.1031654]
• 15: Chia Shen , Frédéric D. Vernier , Clifton Forlines , Meredith Ringel, DiamondSpin: an extensible toolkit for around-the-table interaction, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.167-174, April 24-29, 2004, Vienna, Austria [doi>10.1145/985692.985714]
• 16: Steiner, I. Group Process and Productivity. Academic Press, New York, NY, 1972.
• 17: Tan, D. and Czerwinski, M., Effects of Visual Separation and Physical Discontinuities when Distributing Information across Multiple Displays. in Proceedings of OZCHI 2003 Conference for the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group of the Ergonomics Society of Australia, (Brisbane, Australia, 2003), 184--191.
• 18: Wolfe, J.M. What Can 1,000,000 Trials Tell Us About Visual Search? Psychological Science, 9 (1). 33--39.
• 19: Wolfe, J.M., Horowitz, T.S. and Kenner, N. Rare items often missed in visual searches. Nature, 435. 439--440.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
group size, horizontal display, multi-monitor interfaces, shared-display groupware, visual search