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领域已有百余年的广泛应用历史。然而，艺术家与设计师对社交伪装（social camouflage）的运用则更为久远，其应用范畴涵盖服饰、随身配饰，乃至近年的汽车与产品设计领域。绝大多数从业设计师均通过反复试错，或是师徒传承的方式掌握这类隐性启发式方法（tacit heuristic）。本文将阐明该启发式方法背后的理论原理，并依托多源证据验证其应用可行性。 研究团队收集了七款商用餐具的相关照片，这些餐具专为握力或手部活动能力受限人群设计，其中一款餐具的造型蕴含社交伪装的设计原理。该系列餐具的最优握持造型凸显出其非常规的外观形态，这使得它们在公共场合使用时的接受度较低。 研究团队采用语义差异（SD）量表，以“最无医疗属性”与“最具医疗属性”作为两极形容词，招募143余名学生完成了针对多款餐具的偏好调查。其中8名学生（4男4女）再次参与实验，通过计算机屏幕开展眼动追踪（eye tracking）测试。研究记录了受试者的兴趣区（AOI，Areas of Interests）分布以及注视点的移动顺序。 语义差异量表的评分结果显示，采用社交伪装设计的餐具在偏好维度上更贴近“可接受”的一端，而非偏向“医疗属性”类别。眼动追踪数据表明，受试者在观察采用社交伪装设计的餐具时，视线会跟随高对比度视觉元素的轮廓移动，而非聚焦于餐具本身的实际外形轮廓；而在观察其余餐具时，受试者的视线则会优先聚焦于餐具的整体外形轮廓。 为进一步验证上述发现并解析受试者在决策过程中的视觉浏览模式，团队开展了第二项眼动追踪实验。受试者自愿参与项目的第二阶段研究。实验采用计算机屏幕式眼动仪（SensoMotoric Instrument, SMI），记录受试者在从预设图像选项中进行选择时的眼动轨迹。受试者需再次完成偏好调查问卷。 本数据集包含眼动追踪实验的相关文件，例如展示兴趣区（AOI）的图像、热图以及数据后处理截图。此外，数据集中的视频文件展示了不同测试图像对应的热图序列与受试者的注视路径。原始数据集、事件统计数据、整合后的兴趣区（AOI）文件等均包含受试者的眼动数据。最后两个文件则呈现了眼动追踪实验的汇总结果。