Hetherington, Richard, Crerar, Alison and Turner, Phil (2004) A question of realism. In: User-Centered Interaction Paradigms for Universal Access in the Information Society. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (3196). Springer, pp. 68-76. ISBN 978-3-540-23375-6

Abstract/Description

We present the results of an exploratory study investigating the feasibility of using multimedia software to teach life skills to adults with learning difficulties. As a precursor to determining whether the clients would benefit from the software, we needed to address the issue of realism in visual displays, to discover if photorealistic images of a familiar kitchen and utensils were essential, or if the clients would be able to abstract and apply information from generic cartoon-like representations. The level of realism was varied in two sets of tasks: object recognition exercises and problem-solving scenarios. Realistic versions of each task contained photorealistic images, and the problem-solving scenarios used images and speech of a support worker known to the participants to supply feedback and prompts. Unrealistic versions used clip art images and a cartoon-style character instead of the support worker. Contrary to expectations, measurements of errors and reaction times revealed the level of realism to have a negligible effect upon user performance in both sets of tasks. What has emerged is the overwhelming effect of individual differences on the design and evaluation of learning software

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