Decoupling of Intuitions and Performance in the Use of Complex Visual Displays
Mary Hegarty, Harvey S. Smallman, Andrew T. Stull · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2008
Interactive display systems give users flexibility to tailor visual displays to different tasks and situations.But this flexibility can only be beneficial if users have metaknowledge of the types of displays that are effective for different purposes.In previous studies with both Navy forecasters and undergraduate students, we found that users often prefer maps that display extraneous variables, especially those that add realism to the display, even when they are taskirrelevant.In the current study, we tested undergraduate students on a simple read-off and comparison task with weather maps and measured the effect of these extraneous variables on accuracy, response times, eye fixations, and intuitions about display effectiveness.Extraneous realism slowed response time and lead to more eye fixations on both task-relevant and task-irrelevant regions of the displays.In spite of these decrements in performance, and the fact that realism added no task-relevant information, about a third of participants persisted in favoring these realistic displays over non-realistic maps.