Experimental Evaluation of Semantic Depth of Field, a Preattentive Method for Focus+Context Visualization

We introduce the Semantic Depth of Field (SDOF) technique, which is an alternative focus+context method for information visualisation. SDOF blurs objects which are currently out of focus, i.e., not interesting for the user. In the experimental study described in this paper, we found that SDOF supports the preattentive perception of sharp targets and the numerical estimation of the amount of data being in focus. We investigated the influence of distracting encodings (color and orientation), as well as threshold values for human perception. We also tested applications of SDOF (a textviewer and a scatterplot) with regard to their effectiveness in guiding the user’s attention and with highlighting of data items.