Effects of Visual Stimulus on Response Behavior of Control-on-Display Interface

Control-on-display interfaces enable a direct and intuitive manipulation by inducing control directly through the visual stimuli, thereby reducing information-processing stages and improving feed-forward property. The visual information displayed on such devices act not only as visual stimuli but also as controllers. This study investigated the effect of visual stimulus on users’ response behavior while using touch screen. Three characteristics of visual stimulus were investigated: (a) shape of visual stimulus requesting simple tap reaction, (b) contrast between figure and background, and (c) existence of precue on upcoming event. The effects of the selected factors were tested using the response time and the response accuracy measured by 2D deviation vectors. A full factorial experimental design, followed by a multivariate analysis of variance and pairwise comparisons showed that the shift of the center of area from the circumcenter of the stimuli affects the location where fingertip touched, the different background contrast affects both the time and accuracy, and it is confirmed that precue speeds up the response times and improves accuracy in control-on-display interaction.