Conducted a series of randomized, controlled, within-subject studies examining the effects of display wall curvature (flat vs. curved condition) on participants' insights and use of the display.
Participants were asked to complete a series of tasks using the giga-pixel display. Collected time-to-completion data, verbal questionairre data, and body-movement data through Vicon system.
While examing data visualizations of state crime statistics, we found that participants noticed more "global" data trends in the flat condition versus a more "local" data trends using the curved condition. For example, while using flat display participants would make observations such as "there was a steady increase in crime in Michigan from 1987 to 2005". While using the curved condition participants would make observations such as "there was a large spike of crime in Michigan in 1995".
Shupp, L., Andrews, C., Dickey-Kurdziolek, M., Yost, B., North, C., Shaping the Display of the Future: The Effects of Display Size and Curvature on User Performance and Insights. Journal on Human-Computer Interaction - Special Issue on Ubiquitous Multi-Display Environments, 2009. 24: p. 230-27
