Evaluation of non-photorealistic abstraction techniques in influencing user behaviour

This poster describes an experiment which was conducted to deterimine how using various levels of artistic abstraction within a scene can influence user gaze behaviour and recognition speeds in a visual search task. Non-Photorealistic rendering (NPR) has become a popular technique for the stylization of images and can also be a useful tool for emphasizing certain parts of an image. We found that when unimportant scene data is abstracted users took significantly less time to complete the task in comparison to normal renderings or when the important scene object was abstracted. We also found that some abstraction styles led to considerably faster recognition times than other types of abstraction. These results strongly indicate that non-photorealistic rendering techniques can be effective at improving object recognition times and at directing the users gaze to specific areas of the scene. In addition we believe that our experimental framework will be useful for comparing the effectiveness of different NPR styles in influencing a users perception of a scene.