Modeling Perceptual Dominance Among Visual Cues in Multilayered Icon-based Scientific Visualizations

Figure 1: We present an experimental quantification of how factors such as icon size, spacing, layer order and color affect the relative saliency and interference among five different 2D scalar visualization methods: saturation, lightness, orientation, size, and spacing.(a) Two linear scalar fields used in the experiment. Images (b)-(d) are examples of the stimuli presented in the study: they all represent both linear fields simultaneously, and participants were asked to judge which one they perceived first, i.e. which one is the more salient of the two. (b) Icon orientation on the bottom layer and saturation on the top, (c) a single-layer example with size and spacing, (d) another two-layer display with size on the bottom and lightness on top. Top-layer icons have a gray-valued border at half the lightness value of the inside circle, so as to minimizes simultaneous contrast issues. Circles are used for all methods except orientation, which uses ellipses.