Information Access Costs with a Wide-Angle Desktop Display
DOI: 10.1177/21695067231192646
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
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Summary
This study investigates Information Access Effort (IAE), the cognitive and physical cost of shifting attention between spatially separated information sources on wide-angle displays. As large monitors and head-mounted displays become common, designers must understand how visual separation impacts performance. The research specifically examines whether increasing the lateral separation between two pieces of information on a desktop display leads to performance costs in response time and accuracy, and how head movements mediate these costs. The experiment involved 33 participants performing a spatial integration task on a 49-inch wide-angle monitor. Participants viewed a map with a designated "danger zone" and a grid coordinate number displayed at varying lateral separations: 16, 32, 64, or 128 degrees. Their task was to determine if the coordinate fell within the danger zone. The study measured response time, error rates, and the frequency of head movements required to view both stimuli. Results indicated a significant linear increase in response time as visual separation increased, confirming an IAE cost. However, error rates remained constant at approximately 9% across all separation distances, showing no decline in accuracy. Head movement frequency increased significantly from 16 to 64 degrees but plateaued between 64 and 128 degrees. Correlational analysis revealed that participants who took longer were more accurate, suggesting a speed-accuracy tradeoff. The authors interpret the plateau in head movements at wider angles as a "micro-strategy": rather than making additional, physically costly head turns, participants spent more time fixating on each stimulus to encode it better into working memory, thereby maintaining accuracy without further physical movement. The findings suggest that while IAE imposes a time cost, users can compensate for accuracy losses through head movements and increased fixation time up to approximately 60 degrees of separation. Beyond this range, the physical reluctance to make excessive head movements may constrain performance, though accuracy can still be preserved through cognitive strategies. These results inform display design by highlighting that information separation up to 60 degrees is manageable, but wider separations require careful consideration of user effort and potential time delays.
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via author_sweep_intake on 2026-05-27.
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | author_sweep | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-27 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 6 | 2026-06-09 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-09 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-07 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-07 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-09 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 15 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-09 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-09; verification: verified.
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