Understanding Visual Clutter

视觉杂乱是我们许多人每天都会遇到的事情，无论是桌面上的物品杂乱，无论是真实的还是虚拟的，繁忙街道上的标牌杂乱，还是X光屏幕显示器上的杂乱物体。尽管我们有直觉，但令人惊讶的是，我们对如何科学地定义视觉杂乱知之甚少。我们可以主观判断，但明确定义的问题一直没有解决。在NSF的资助下，罗森霍尔茨博士正在利用我们对视觉感知系统的了解来开发一个数学模型，可以估计视觉显示器的杂乱程度。该模型基于一个简单的概念，即当在不降低性能的情况下向显示器添加项目变得困难时，混乱就开始了。这个想法有一个违反直觉的后果，那就是杂乱无章不是物品总数的简单函数。相反，混乱是由于许多物品与其他因素(如物品排列、形状和颜色)的复杂相互作用造成的。该模型将在各种视觉显示的背景下，根据人类观察者所感知的杂乱程度进行测试。这些衡量标准包括主体判断以及一些既定的人类绩效衡量标准。这些实验的结果将促进我们对视觉场景如何被感知的理解，这些进步可能有助于减少显示器中的杂乱，这些努力即使不是关键的，也是有帮助的。

Visual clutter is something many of us encounter everyday, whether it is the clutter of items on a desktop, real or virtual, the clutter of signs on a busy street, or the clutter of objects on x-ray screening display. Our intuitions notwithstanding, we know surprisingly little about how to define visual clutter scientifically. We can judge it subjectively, but the problem of formulating an explicit definition has gone unsolved. With NSF funding, Dr. Rosenholtz is using what we know about visual perceptual systems to develop a mathematical model that can estimate the degree of clutter in a visual display. The model is based on the simple notion that clutter begins when it becomes difficult to add items to a display without degrading performance. There is a counterintuitive consequence to this idea, which is that clutter is not a simple function of the total number of items. Instead, clutter is due to the complex interplay of a number of items with other factors such as item arrangement, shape, and color. The model will be tested against measures of clutter as perceived by human observers, in the context of a variety of visual displays. The measures include subject judgments as well as a number of established human performance metrics. The results of these experiments will advance our understanding of how visual scenes are perceived, and these advances may help with efforts to reduce clutter in displays where such efforts are helpful if not critical.