Re: Screen Fatigue

[Jim Curran <jcurran -at- VNET -dot- IBM -dot- COM>]

In <9410072003 -dot- AA08010 -at- cnseq1 -dot- ca -dot- oracle -dot- com>, Gwen Gall <ggall -at- ca -dot- oracle -dot- com>
 writes:

>Ah, but studies show that screens do indeed cause fatigue--particularly
>interlaced screens, where the pixels must be drawn twice to acheive full
>resolution. That's why you pay the big bucks for "non-interlaced" screens.

>LCD doesn't have that problem, of course.

>Doesn't anyone else here get fatigued while reading a book, though? The
>contrast of black on white is known to cause eye-strain, and I fall asleep
>or get restless sometimes....depends on the book, of course!


Gwen, I'd like to see citations of those studies.  I posted this the
other day:

Here's a conclusion on fatigue in reading from visual display units (VDUs),
from Dillon (1994) - _Designing Usable Electronic Text_:

"It would seem safe to conclude that users do not find reading from VDUs
 intrinsically fatiguing but that performance levels may be more difficult
 to sustain over time when reading from average quality screens.  As screen
 standards increase over time this problem should be minimized."

Admittedly this is a summary statement but I didn't see any mention of
the effects you mention.
----------
Jim Curran                                   "The Internet is not a freeway --
Information Developer                         it's a toll road."
RTP, NC USA                                                      - Regis Magyar