THE IMPACT OF GRAPHICAL DISPLAYS ON PERSUASION: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Computer generated presentation graphics are increasingly becoming a tool to aid management in communicating information and to cause an audience to accept a point of view or take action. Unfortunately, technological capability significantly exceeds current levels of user understanding and effective application. The research reported here experimentally examines the persuasive impact of characteristics of computer-generated presentation graphics. The underlying model of persuasion is drawn from the communications literature. The study compares use of color versus black and white, and text versus image enhancement. Treatments were presented in association with a videotaped presentation intended to persuade subjects to invest time and money in a set of time management seminars. Pre-measure, post-measure, and post-measure followup questionnaires tracked changes in subject commitment. Subject perceptions of the presenter were also recorded. Overall, presentations supported with overhead transparencies were 46% more persuasive than unaided presentations. Visual aids had a major positive impact on audience perceptions of a presenter. The overall persuasion process model was only partially confirmed

The Effect of Multiple Formats on Understanding Complex Visual Displays

Provides pedagogical insight concerning the skill of contours The resource being annotated is: http://www.dlese.org/dds/catalog_DLESE-000-000-004-595.htm

The Effect of Multiple Formats on Understanding Complex Visual Displays

Students in introductory science courses frequently have difficulty comprehending complex graphics such as contour maps. Computer-assisted instruction (CAI), because of its ability to convey the same information in different formats, may help students gain necessary graphic interpretation skills. This article describes a research project in which students practiced reading two temperature maps in either a standard black and white contour or a color-enhanced contour format. They were then divided into groups and tested using only standard contour maps. The tests examined comprehension of the distribution of sea surface temperature, oceanographic phosphate concentration, and brain activation. Results suggest that having students practice with differently formatted maps of the same information improves later comprehension of standard contour maps. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

Interactive Extraction of High-Frequency Aesthetically-Coherent Colormaps

Color transfer functions (i.e. colormaps) exhibiting a high frequency luminosity component have proven to be useful in the visualization of data where feature detection or iso-contours recognition is essential. Having these colormaps also display a wide range of color and an aesthetically pleasing composition holds the potential to further aid image understanding and analysis. However producing such colormaps in an efficient manner with current colormap creation tools is difficult. We hereby demonstrate an interactive technique for extracting colormaps from artwork and pictures. We show how the rich and careful color design and dynamic luminance range of an existing image can be gracefully captured in a colormap and be utilized effectively in the exploration of complex datasets

Frequency Analysis of Gradient Estimators in Volume Rendering

Gradient information is used in volume rendering to classify and color samples along a ray. In this paper, we present an analysis of the theoretically ideal gradient estimator and compare it to some commonly used gradient estimators. A new method is presented to calculate the gradient at arbitrary sample positions, using the derivative of the interpolation filter as the basis for the new gradient filter. As an example, we will discuss the use of the derivative of the cubic spline. Comparisons with several other methods are demonstrated. Computational efficiency can be realized since parts of the interpolation computation can be leveraged in the gradient estimatio