Object displays for identifying multidimensional outliers within a crowded visual periphery

This article discusses the human ability to detect, locate, or identify objects and their features using peripheral vision. The potential of peripheral vision is underused with user interfaces probably due to the limits of visual acuity. Peripheral preview can guide focused attention to informative locations, if the visual objects are large enough and otherwise within the limits of discrimination. Our experiments focused on the task of identifying an outlier and implicated another limiting factor, crowding, for integration of object features. The target object and the corresponding data dimension were located from an object display representation used for integrating multidimensional data. We measured performance on a peripheral vision task in terms of reaction times and eye movements. Subjects identified the target item from 480 alternatives within 100 ms. Therefore, the identification process would not slow down the natural gaze sequence and focused attention during monitoring and data mining tasks.

Research highlights
► Human ability to detect, locate, or identify objects and their features are discussed.
► The specific constraints to peripheral visual representations are size and spacing.
► Object displays facilitated identification of deviant objects and dimensions.