Social camouflage: A survey of 143 students of their preference for assistive technology cutlery and the visual mechanisms being influenced

Camouflage has been used extensively in
modern military applications for over one hundred years. However, social camouflage
has been used by artists and designers for even longer within clothing,
body-worn accessories and more recently automotive and product design. Most
practicing designers learn this tacit heuristic through trial and error or
passed on through master-student experience. This paper will provide the
theoretical principles behind the heuristic and validate their application
through evidence from different sources. A series of photographs was compiled
of seven commercially available cutleries for people with limited grip strength
or mobility in their hands that included a set that embodied the principles of
social camouflage. The optimum shapes for grip in these sets highlights their
unconventional shape, making them less desirable to use in public. A survey of
preferences for a range of cutlery was completed with over 143 students using a
semantic differential (SD) scale, with ‘least medical’ and ‘most medical’ as
the polar nouns. A sample of eight students, four male, four females, completed
the survey again using computer screen-based eye tracking. The areas of
interest and the order of movement of fixations were noted. The SD scale order
placed the socially camouflaged closer to desirable than medical term. Eye
tracking highlighted that students followed the outline of the highest contrast
visual elements when viewing the socially camouflaged cutlery; being drawn away
from the outline of the actual shape. In all others, the outline profile was
prominent.

To further validate
the findings and to inspect viewing pattern of participants when making choices,
eye-tracking experiment was conducted. The participants were asked to volunteer
to complete the second phase of the project. A computer screen-based eye-tacker
(SensoMotoric Instrument, SMI) was used to capture the eye-movement of the participants,
when making selection from the presented choices of images. Participants were
asked to complete the survey again.This data-set includes the files from the eye-tracking experiment such as images showing Areas of Interests (AOI), heatmaps and screenshots from post-processing of data. Additionally, videos in data-set show the sequence of heatmaps and gaze path of participants for different images presented. The files such as; raw data-set, event statistics, larger and integrated AOI, contains the eye-movement data of participants. The last two files show summarised outcomes from the eye-tracking experiment.

伪装技术在现代军事应用中已广泛使用逾百年之久。然而，在社会领域，艺术家与设计师在服装、随身配饰等领域使用伪装的历史更为悠久，而近年来，汽车与产品设计也开始采纳这一理念。大多数设计师通过试错或师徒传承的方式习得这一隐秘的启发式方法。本文旨在阐述该启发式方法背后的理论原则，并通过不同来源的证据来验证其应用的有效性。研究人员汇编了一系列七款商业可用的适合手部力量或活动能力受限者的餐具照片，其中一套餐具体现了社会伪装的原则。这些餐具中握持的最佳形状突显了其非传统的外形，使其在公共场合的使用显得不那么诱人。通过对143名学生进行的餐具偏好调查，使用语义差异（SD）量表，以“最不医疗”和“最医疗”作为两极名词，发现社会伪装餐具的偏好更接近理想。在八名学生（其中四名男性，四名女性）再次进行调查时，采用了基于计算机屏幕的眼动追踪技术。调查记录了兴趣区域和注视点的移动顺序。SD量表将社会伪装餐具与理想偏好更近，而眼动追踪结果表明，学生在观察社会伪装餐具时，会跟随最高对比度视觉元素的轮廓；而被实际形状的轮廓所吸引。在其他情况下，轮廓轮廓则显得突出。为进一步验证研究结果并检查参与者在做选择时的观看模式，进行了眼动追踪实验。参与者被邀请自愿完成项目的第二阶段。使用基于计算机屏幕的眼动追踪设备（SensoMotoric Instrument, SMI）捕捉参与者在从所展示的图像选择中进行选择时的眼动。参与者被要求再次完成调查。该数据集包括眼动追踪实验的文件，如显示兴趣区域（AOI）的图像、热图和数据处理后的屏幕截图。此外，数据集中的视频展示了不同图像展示时参与者的热图序列和注视路径。文件包括；原始数据集、事件统计、更大的集成AOI，包含参与者的眼动数据。最后两个文件展示了眼动追踪实验的总结结果。