Human Vision Heuristics?
April 26, 2013 8:48 AM Subscribe
Are there any rules of thumb that human factors experts, graphic designers or user interface designers use regrading how much detail a typical human eye can resolve in different commonly-encountered situations?
The company I work for makes oil & gas drilling instrumentation that puts wiggly lines on 300 dpi B&W and 600 dpi color paper multi-track strip charts. Trained experts (our customers) then use the wiggly lines to make decisions about what to do next while or after drilling a well.
I would like to find some commonly-used graphics / human factors heuristics to help guide our new product requirements. In other words, where's the point of diminishing returns where most people couldn't tell the difference and it's pointless for us to improve upon the source measurement or wiggly line resolution any further?
Are there any rules of thumb that human factors experts, graphic designers or user interface designers use regrading how much detail a typical human eye can resolve in different commonly-encountered situations?
Are there any online resources / articles in this area?
Thanks, hive mind!
The company I work for makes oil & gas drilling instrumentation that puts wiggly lines on 300 dpi B&W and 600 dpi color paper multi-track strip charts. Trained experts (our customers) then use the wiggly lines to make decisions about what to do next while or after drilling a well.
I would like to find some commonly-used graphics / human factors heuristics to help guide our new product requirements. In other words, where's the point of diminishing returns where most people couldn't tell the difference and it's pointless for us to improve upon the source measurement or wiggly line resolution any further?
Are there any rules of thumb that human factors experts, graphic designers or user interface designers use regrading how much detail a typical human eye can resolve in different commonly-encountered situations?
Are there any online resources / articles in this area?
Thanks, hive mind!
Response by poster: Chocolate Pickle: You're in the right neighborhood ... human cognition, short-term memory ... but I'm looking for something more along the line of "if the dots / lines are this far apart / changing at this rate then most people will notice / not notice at this threshold" kinda thing.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 9:53 AM on April 26, 2013
posted by ZenMasterThis at 9:53 AM on April 26, 2013
Best answer: You could look for books about cartography for GIS. I had a class in it a long time ago. They do deal with issues like how much detail to put on a map at different zoom levels.
I do remember some of the info, enough that I was good at one time at improving usability of spreadsheets and the like at work. But I am not understanding your issue well enough to say anything meaningful and not just blather on in generalities.
posted by Michele in California at 10:13 AM on April 26, 2013
I do remember some of the info, enough that I was good at one time at improving usability of spreadsheets and the like at work. But I am not understanding your issue well enough to say anything meaningful and not just blather on in generalities.
posted by Michele in California at 10:13 AM on April 26, 2013
Best answer: The simplest answer to your question comes from this sort of information on human visual acuity
However, even if you know what the eye can resolve, I don't think that answers your questions because you're asking more complex questions about angles and gradients - you might have to measure that stuff yourself.
However (again) even if you had that information, I'm not sure it would tell you anything useful because even if people can see a difference, they might not necessarily make decisions based on that difference. They are likely not even able to process the information carried as our attentional capacity is much more limited than our visual capacity. If you give as much information as they eye could possibly resolve then that seems inefficient if we actually use 10x less than that.
posted by kadia_a at 10:29 AM on April 26, 2013
However, even if you know what the eye can resolve, I don't think that answers your questions because you're asking more complex questions about angles and gradients - you might have to measure that stuff yourself.
However (again) even if you had that information, I'm not sure it would tell you anything useful because even if people can see a difference, they might not necessarily make decisions based on that difference. They are likely not even able to process the information carried as our attentional capacity is much more limited than our visual capacity. If you give as much information as they eye could possibly resolve then that seems inefficient if we actually use 10x less than that.
posted by kadia_a at 10:29 AM on April 26, 2013
Best answer: Thanks, kadia_a, "visual acuity" seems to be the a key phrase I was missing. This gets me going in a good direction, though I agree that there are other levels to the problem!
posted by ZenMasterThis at 11:02 AM on April 26, 2013
posted by ZenMasterThis at 11:02 AM on April 26, 2013
Best answer: There's some material on minimum visibility requirements in MIL-STD-872G, Human Factors Engineering. The U.S. military has a vested interest in having systems that people can see, understand and deal with quickly under stressful conditions.
posted by Etrigan at 11:40 AM on April 26, 2013
posted by Etrigan at 11:40 AM on April 26, 2013
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posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:35 AM on April 26, 2013