Large Screens and User Performance

Ajith Kumar

Abstract—Large Screens are widely used in present day applications, especially in areas like information visualization, real-time
monitoring of large systems, Geospatial information systems etc. Large Screens improve the user performance on these systems.
By performance we refer to the speed in which the users can carry out their tasks. There are several factors that affect the user
performance. Firstly the type of hardware device used in the setup, secondly the possibility of the configuration used in creatively
exploiting the human abilities. Human abilities include physical navigation and peripheral vision. Ultimately the performance of the
system used is still dependent on the corresponding application for which it is used. It is a challenge to come up with an optimum
solution for each application. This survey is to study some of these factors using given set of taks and their results. Using the
inferences obtained from the results to give a set of rules while using these types of display devices. We also discuss on the topic of
the effect of bezels on visualization tasks.

1 OVERVIEW
Visualizing large sets of data on a single user desktop can be a tedious
task. A simple overview of such large data set might not fit into the
screen of such a desktop. In such case, user would have to pan and
zoom several times to study the data carefully. In spite of immense
effort used, it is still difficult to get a clear overview of the data. This
is expensive in terms of time consumed and also on frustration caused.
One of the solutions is to use large displays. There has been a much
work in this area and different possible hardware configurations, for
building large displays have been proposed. One of the possibilities is
to use a single large screen, which was then was an expensive solution.
Another solution is, to use the smaller displays and to combine them to
obtain one large screen. This resulted in construction of displays like
the Tiled display [1] . The tiled display can also be built in other ways.
A tiled displays is further classified into two types flat and curved dis-
plays. These experiments yield some interesting results. Some other
types of flat displays are also compared namely the focus+context dis- Fig. 2. Approach
play and overview+detail display.

2 I NTRODUCTION
In this section we briefly introduce the various types of displays used
and their respective features.

2.1 Tiled Display Types

The Tiled Displays can be built in two ways, one of them is as ex-
plained earlier using multiple monitors placed adjacent to each other.
The alternate way is to use rear projectors and a display. The rear pro-
Fig. 1. Normal tiled screen with bezels jectors are placed adjacent to each other projecting to a screen, in such
a way as to constitute a single large display. This setup can be con-
structed with minimum bezels, physical discontinuation between two
In this paragraph we briefly describe the approach of the survey. adjacent monitors. The difference in the two types of setup is that, the
First step is to study the need for large displays. We then move-on to size of bezels can be decreased greatly in the rear projector setup. but
the types of large displays present and their features. Among the types at the cost of more setup space being consumed. 8
of large displays present, the ones which have the potential usefulness
both in terms of cost and effectiveness are chosen. The tasks selected
to compare the displays and the experimental setup used for the same
are taken from the literature survey. The analysis and results of these
experiments gives some insight on the salient features and differences
of the displays compared. Using the inference from these set of analy-
sis and results we give out the important details to be considering while
choosing the large displays. Also a topic of bezels with its advantages
and disadvantages are discussed.

Manuscript received 31 March 2010; accepted 1 August 2010; posted online

Fig. 3. Rear projector setup with minimum bezels [7]
24 October 2010; mailed on 16 October 2010.
For information on obtaining reprints of this article, please send
email to: tvcg@computer.org. The tiled display can be used in two more type of configurations
namely
 • Flat display setup :- Same as the basic setup where monitors or
projected screens are adjacent to each other and flat. 8
• Curved displays :- Uses the multi-monitor setup or projected
screens, where each monitor is placed at a specific angle to its
adjacent monitor creating a curved surface.
Fig. 4. Curved tiled screen with bezels [7]
2.2 Focus+context Display
Large displays are also used as focus+context displays. In a fo-
cus+context display, figure 2.2 . The part with yellow shade is the
focus region. In the focus region the resolution of the view-port is
higher than the rest of the screen space. The rest of the screen acts
as the context display. Focus combined with the context is useful to
give important insights on visualizing the data. This type of setup is
also used in the survey. Tiled monitors can also be used to create fo-
cus+context displays. This type of display comes with user interaction
controls such as, to change the region of focus when required.
Fig. 5. Focus+context display[4]
2.3 Human vision and Physical navigation
2.3.1 Peripheral Vision and focus
Peripheral vision or the side vision is the ability to see objects and
movement outside the direct line of vision. Considering the high reso-
lution and wider field of view of large displays, more pixels is simulta-
neously visible to the human eye [2]. This ability together with focus
is used extensively in displays which use context+focus on the same
screen. Peripheral vision is mainly used to identify interrupts which
occur on special occasions, to notify the users some significant change
in the state of the system. For example in a normal desktop of a user,
receiving a mail can be shown as a notification. The key factors here
are the ability to see more pixels simultaneously with proper focus
region defined and also having a contextual overview of the data.
Fig. 6. Peripheral Vision
2.3.2 Physical Navigation
The huge size of Large displays allow the users to be able to physically
navigate through the data. Physical navigation includes translational
movement and rotational movement. Translational movement means
the user can move parallel to the display without having to rotate
their head and focus on the different regions as they move. Rotational
movement refers to use of head movement and focusing on different
areas. Users can also step back and forth the display, get an overview
of the data or focus a particular location on the screen. Virtual Nav-
igation was usually used to go through large data sets on single user
desktops. Virtual navigation is quite tedious when large volume data is
involved. Introduction of large screens encourages physical navigation
and hence eliminates for the need of virtual navigation.
Fig. 7. Translational and Rotational movement
3 A PPROACH
In this section we briefly describe the approach of the survey. First step
is to study the need for large displays. We then move-on to the types
of large displays present and their features. Among the types of large
displays present, the ones which have the potential usefulness both
in terms of cost and effectiveness are chosen. The tasks selected to
compare the displays and the experimental setup used for the same are
studied carefully. The analysis and results of these experiments gives
some insight on the salient features and differences of the displays
compared. Using the inference from these set of analysis and results

Fig. 8. Approach
we give out the important details to be considering while choosing the
large displays. The pipeline chosen is as shown in the figure 8
4 E XPERIMENTS S TUDIED
4.1 Tasks
We have picked up six basic visualization tasks among the several task
studied during the survey. Some of the tasks are based on Geo Spatial
Information. The first three of the tasks where used to compare flat
displays and curved displays. The last three tasks are for the compar-
ison between overview+detail display and focus+context display. The
first five tasks are static tasks. The last one is a dynamic task, used to
get insight on dynamic views. The tasks are:
• Search task : The user has to search a particular icon or figure
over the given map.
• Comparison task : The user was asked to compare the data of
given two locations over the map.
• Insight : The basic idea of visualization is to obtain insights on
the given information. So users where asked to give out the first
insight they obtained from the map.
• Circuit board task: Users are presented with an image of a circuit
board of some device. The task was to verify the circuit connec-
tions by matching any source connection on to the chip placed in
the centre of the screen. There were correct corrections as well
as incorrect ones.
• Map task: Similar to the search task, here the users have to find
the nearest hotel to a given location, nearest in terms of time to
travel.
• Car task: In this task the user has to drive a car through a road
amidst the mountains. The constraints here are that nails are
placed on the road, which are clearly visible in the focus/detail
region and the user has to prevent the car from running over them
by changing the direction. The second constraint was to avoid
stones falling from the mountains. The stones falling could be
seen only in the context/overview part of the display.
4.2 Experimental Setup
The first 3 tasks defined where run on a setup containing a display of
size 24 panels and 31.5 mega pixel resolution. The display was used
in both flat as well as curved setup. In the flat setup the 24 panels
where placed adjacent to each other in a grid structure using 3 panels
vertically and 8 rows horizontally. Each panel was a 17 inch LCD
with the highest resolution of 1280 × 1024 . Also a 12 GNU/Linux
computers to power the display.The same displays where used for the
curved setup but the panels where placed at an angle of 30deg with the
adjacent panel.
The last 3 tasks used large screens(any of the two types)
for focus+context displays and tiled displays with 2 monitors for
overview+detail display. The overview+detail display had one mon-
itor dedicated for detailed data and the other one for overview of the
entire data.
4.3 Results
The results obtained from first three experiments was that the curved
display seemed to outperform the flat display in case of the search
task and the comparison task. This is due to the fact that in curved
display setup translational movement required is less compared to the
flat display setup. For the insight task Flat displays where preferred
over the curved display. The reason was that the in flat display users
had the provision to step back and get an overview of the display and
see things in context. The curved display is built such that when user
steps back and looks at the display, users get a distorted image because
of the angle in which the displays are placed.
The last three experiments where implemented on the fo-
cus+context display and the overview+detail display. In the paper
referred zoom+pan display which uses a single desktop is also con-
sidered, but in the result point of view the its stance is quite negligible
compared to the other two displays. The results of the first two experi-
ments shows, that the time consumed by the focus+context is less than
overview+detail display with a decent margin. In the car task the fo-
cus+context display completely outperforms the overview+detail dis-
play. This says that in dynamic views where required concentration
level is higher focus+context display setups work better. Both these
types of displays and these experiments entirely rely on the peripheral
vision concepts.
5 B EZELS AND ITS EFFECTS
Bezels as described earlier refers to physical discontinuities on large
screens. Bezels can be seen in tiled displays. There were quite good
number of study on these topic. Bezels [5] always have an effect on
the user performance. The particular scenarios where Bezel effects
can be seen are:
• Search task: Search task is affected by the presence of bezels
when the target to be searched is split across the Bezels [9],
which makes it difficult to identify the target. It can also be ad-
vantageous in terms of dividing the search space into grids, there-
fore making it easier to the user to remember the space searched
previously. In the alternative case where single large screens are
used users might have to virtually separate the search space but
virtually separating spaces could be quite tedious sometimes.
• Map navigating task: Map navigating refers to finding a path be-
tween a source and a destination on the map. In this case bezels
might affect negatively due to the discontinuity of the maps be-
tween the bezels and distorted effect on the map.
6 I NFERENCES FROM THE STUDY
6.1 Bezels
The presence of bezels has both merits and demerits. The actual effect
is more application dependent. Basically the static tasks such as search
tasks are still less effected by the bezels. The bezels can be more
distracting when dynamic scenarios are considered. Especially in high
resolution gaming scenarios [7], users feel distracted from the bezels
due to distorted view as shown in the figure 9. More the bezel size
more distraction is felt. Hence in these cases rear projectors setup is
usually preferred by users. In Few cases the problem of bezels can be
solved to some extent by creating extra software to manage the display.
Mackinlay et.al [6] suggested a way in which any unnecessary data
present in the vicinity of the bezels, can be drawn at the place of bezels
hence omitted in the actual screen retaining continuity in the images.
This approach can be used in some cases where some low priority
data for example in graph of links and nodes the links near the bezel
are can be compromised. The graph with nodes split across the bezels
is shown in the figure 10. The graph obtained after compromising the
links in the vicinity of bezels is shown in the figure 11. This does

Fig. 9. This shows the distorted effect caused by the bezels [6]
not work in the same manner for geo-spatial data with maps involved.
Applying it on maps would cause some roads, street names or some
other data to be lost, which is not acceptable. We conclude on this say-
ing that any large volume data with some low priority data with it can
be approximated using the method given by Mackinlay et.al to obtain
better imagery effects. The effect of bezels on the graph example is
given in the following figures.
Fig. 10. Dividing of nodes caused due to bezels [6]
Fig. 11. Dividing of nodes problem solved [6]
6.2 Tiled display
The study says that user satisfaction in case of tiled displays is some-
times reduced to some level due to the presence of bezels. But it is
still not cost worthy to use single large displays as solution for this
problem. Hence users continue to use tiled displays with bezels with
good effort in decreasing the bezel size. Tiled displays have shown
performance benefits over single monitor on almost every application
involving large volume data [3]. This infers that it is advisable to use
larger displays when large volume visualization data is involved, so as
to obtain optimum user performance. Now going into specific types of
tiled displays.
6.2.1 Curved display
The various experiments and result analysis studied previously shows
a lot of advantages of using curved displays over the flat displays. Spe-
cially in case of Geo-Spatial information using search and navigating
tasks. This is mainly due to the reduced need for translational move-
ment and more number of pixels directly visible to the user at a given
time. Hence for tasks which involve looking throughout the display
or searching something on it Curved displays can be preferably used
over the flat display. But when it comes to the insight task the curved
display is less preferred by the users. This is due to the fact that there
is no provision to step back in the curved display. Stepping back will
give only a distorted image in this case. So whenever an application
requires to be looked in to get visualization insights Flat displays come
into picture.
6.2.2 Flat display
Even though flat display setups are outperformed by the curved display
it is still required in some important steps of visualization pipelines.
Precisely in the task to gain important insights in the visualized data.
The flat displays provide room for all possible physical navigation
such as translational movement and rotational movement. This pro-
vides the users an option to move back and forth to get overview look
into more data together and get a proper image to look at think about
the possible insights.
6.3 Combining the curved Display and the flat Display
Given the detailed advantages of both curved display and flat display
it is clearly understood that both of these are required in some stage of
the visualization pipeline. This is because visualization pipeline will
always have a task to gain insights to the given data and it will be of
prime importance. Hence it is good to achieve a setup which combines
curved and flat displays. As the possible solution mentioned by Shupp
et.al [8] it would be good to have a setup that uses tiled monitors and
can be used as both curved display as well as flat display as and when
required. Thus obtaining the benefits of both types of displays.
7 L IMITATIONS OF THE DISPLAYS
Both Curved displays and flat displays of the displays have certain lim-
itations. After a certain point adding more and more panels/monitors
to the curved display setup has no increase in performance. The perfor-
mance will actually stop increasing and will reach to the level same as
Flat displays. Hence the number of panels used in tiled displays or the
screen size of large displays should always be kept below some level.
The limitation in height can be defined as 3 panels each of 17 inches
vertically or 60inch for single large display. Width can go around for
8 panels for tiled displays and same length for single large displays.
Beyond this range the user performance will not be improved in any
case hence wasting the setup cost and increasing user frustration. The
limitations graph as given by Shupp et.al can be seen in the figure 12.
Fig. 12. Limitation of the curved display in terms of performance [8]
8 C ONCLUSION AND F UTURE WORK
The experiments and the inferences obtained along the survey has
given some important insights about the Large screens. Among the
two types of main displays Tiled displays seem to be an accepted solu-
tion because of its lower setup cost. In terms of performance, the com-
parison between the curved display and flat display has yielded some
interesting results. The results show that in most of the tasks curved
display outperforms the flat display, but eventually flat display is re-
quired for crucial tasks such as the insight task. The solution in such a
case is to have a display which has tiled monitors and can be switched
between being a curved display or flat display. In other comparative
study between the focus+context display and overview+detail display,
the former has an upper hand on tasks studied. After this study it is
also advisable to use focus+context display wherever tiled displays are
being used with proper user interaction to change the region of focus
when required.

Fig. 13. Flat and Curved display combined

Future work suggested are to perform proper user study on long

term effects of using flat displays or curved displays. This study might
reveal more interesting fact and help in deciding the proper solution for
the question of display to be used. Proper interface design for the large
screens to efficiently utilize the resources available is also a scope for
study. The better the user interface is more user performance benefits
can be seen.
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