The effect of familiarity on perceived interestingness of images

We present an exploration of familiarity as a meaningful dimension for the individualized adaptation of media-rich interfaces. In this paper, we investigate in particular the effect of digital images personalized for familiarity on users’ perceived interestingness. Two dimensions of familiarity, facial familiarity and familiarity with image context, are manipulated. Our investigation consisted of three studies: the first two address how morphing technology can be used to convey meaningful familiarity, and the third studies the effect of such familiarity on users’ sense of interestingness. Four levels of person familiarity varying in degree of person knowledge, and two levels of context familiarity varying in frequency of exposure, were considered: Self, Friend, Celebrity, and Stranger in Familiar and Unfamiliar contexts. Experimental results showed significant main effects of context and person familiarity. Our findings deepen understanding of the critical element of familiarity in HCI and its relationship to the interestingness of images, and can have great impact for the design of media-rich systems.