Physiological and psychological evaluation for visual display colour readability: a visual evoked potential study and...

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Visual Perception
• Physiological Optics

Background:

• Visual display terminal (VDT) color readability is crucial for user experience and performance.
• Understanding the interplay between physical color properties and physiological responses is complex.
• Previous research has not fully established objective measures for VDT color readability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between VDT display color characteristics and readability.
• To identify optimal color parameters for enhanced VDT readability.
• To explore the potential of physiological measures, specifically visual evoked potentials (VEPs), as objective indicators of readability.

Main Methods:

• Conducted subjective evaluations including paired comparison tests and semantic differential (SD) method with factor analysis on 30 color stimuli.
• Determined optimal stimulus purity ranges (0.2-0.55) for various dominant wavelengths based on subjective readability.
• Performed objective evaluations using color-VEPs, measuring P100 peak latencies in response to different color stimuli and purities.

Main Results:

• Subjective tests identified an optimal stimulus purity range (0.2-0.55) for dominant wavelengths, with 'conspicuousness' and 'comfort' factors extracted.
• Objective VEP tests revealed significantly shorter P100 peak latencies for colors with optimal stimulus purity compared to others.
• Shorter VEP P100 peak latencies were also observed for text colors with the most readable stimulus purities.

Conclusions:

• The optimal VDT display color is characterized by the most readable stimulus purity for a given dominant wavelength.
• Color-VEP peak latency serves as a reliable objective indicator for quantifying VDT display color readability.
• These findings provide a basis for designing more readable and comfortable VDT interfaces.