Investigating the effect of real-time stylisation techniques on user task performance

In this paper, we present a perceptual experiment whose results aid the creation of non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) styles which can positively affect user task performance in real-time scenes. In a visual search task designed to test people's perception of abstracted scenes, different types of stylisation are used to investigate how reaction times can be affected. We show how NPR techniques compare against non-stylised renderings, compare the effectiveness of different styles, determine how varying each style can affect performance and investigate how these styles perform with objects of varying complexity. The results show that NPR can be a useful tool for increasing the saliency of target objects while reducing the visual impact of the rest of the scene. However, it is also shown that the success of each style depends largely on the scene context and also on the level of stylisation used. We believe the results from this study can help in the creation of effective NPR styles in the future. Supplementary material can be found at http://isg.cs.tcd.ie/skrbal/redmond/.