Evaluation of Readability of displays in Bright Surroundings

Sammanfattning: With the wide spread of wireless technology, many devices, such as tablets, smartphones, notebooks, fixed and portable navigation systems are becoming immensely convenient to access and are making a significant contribution to our daily life. Compared to conventional PC, portable devices are used at different times of the day and in various conditions and environments, both indoors and outdoors. As a consequence, devices need to be adaptive and adaptable to a wide range of use contexts and conditions. It is often argued that contextual factors, such as the ambient illuminance in relation to characteristics of the display (e.g., surface treatment, size, screen reflectance, and display luminance) may have a strong influence on the use of such devices and corresponding user experiences. Yet, the current understanding of these influence factors is still rather limited. Therefore, in this thesis work, emphasis is given particularly to the impact of lighting on readability, visual performance and affective state. As a first step, a preparatory investigation focusing on the objective measure- ment of display luminance and contrast, display gloss, and luminance in different scenes, took place. For this first step, a large number of tablet and laptop dis- plays were evaluated. This preparatory investigation served as a complement to and as an input for step two, namely a subjective study with human test subjects which was organized in a controlled lab environment. In the subjective test (N=18), different types of displays, luminance settings and lighting conditions were included to investigate the impact on display read- ability. The results of subjective tests indicate that for matte, visual acuity and reading speed is both impaired by the increase of ambient light luminance. However, they are compensated effectively by the increase of display luminance when it is below 500-600 cd/ m2. Compared with matte display, the glossy dis- play shows to be more robust in relation to the ambient light, though it indeed has a negative effect on visual acuity and reading speed. However, for subjective feelings, there is no significant difference between the two displays. Both of them are influenced by the ambient light only. In the post-experiment evaluation of the preference of displays, the majority (61%) of the test subjects indicated a preference for the glossy display.