Studies On Types Of Highlighting In Visual Search

Highlighting is a kind of technique or method, which is supposed to reduce the average visual search time. In this research, four experiments had been designed to investigate the types of highlighting. The first three experiments explored the effects of color, blinking and reverse video as types of highlighting on visual search performance in white and black background respectively. Then the last one made a comparison between the two effective types of highlighting, i.e. color and blinking. Based on the results, some principles of computer display design were induced.The results were as follows: (1) Color had no highlighting influence on visual search performance in white background. However, red highlighting, yellow highlighting and green highlighting could significantly improve visual search performance in black ground. (2) Blinking had highlighting influence on visual search performance in both backgrounds. Besides, high-frequency highlighting, and mediate-frequency highlighting could significantly improve visual search performance. (3) There were negative effects of reverse video on visual search performance in both backgrounds, however, the negative effect was not significant in white background. (4) The effects of color on visual search performance were better than blinking in both backgrounds, especially in black background.