MEASURING AWARENESS AND DISTRACTION CAUSED BY CHANGE IN INFORMATION DENSITY A Semester project by MAULIK SHUKLA DENZIL JOHN AJAY JAMPANI Project Advisors: DR. CHRIS NORTH DR. SCOTT McCRICKARD

CONTENTS MOTIVATION EXPERIMENTAL SET UP METHODOLOGY SUBJECTS FINDINGS CONCLUSION FUTURE WORK

MOTIVATION Understanding the effects of information density on one’s ability to perform primary task Awareness caused by a change in information density Related work - SOMERVELL et al. “Measuring awareness and distraction caused by textual and graphical displays in the periphery”

EXPERIMENTAL SET UP Primary Task: Computer Simulated Game Secondary Task: Pictures of Varying Density

PICTURES OF DIFFERENT DENSITY LEVELS DENSITY RATIO 16:4:1 (FOR ALL PURPOSE) HIGH (320) MEDIUM (80) LOW (20)

METHODOLOGY Three Groups - Only game - Only picture - Game + Picture Three Rounds Three Density Levels In changing order - Low Mid High - Mid High Low - High Low Mid

SUBJECTS

RESULTS

CONCLUSIONS No significant effect of information density on primary task performance – It is just presence of secondary task that makes the difference No significant effect of change in density on secondary task performance Count and Identify tasks are better at low densities and Pattern and Group tasks are better at high densities

FUTURE WORK Make the primary and secondary task more realistic More weightage to the errors in primary task Time based analysis of effect of information density on primary task

THANKS Special thanks to JACOB SOMERVELL for system integration STUDENTS OF 2604 and all other FRIENDS who participated in the experiment