Subtle cueing for visual search in head-tracked head worn displays

Goal-oriented visual search in augmented reality can be facilitated by using visual cues to call attention to a target. However, traditional use of explicit cues can degrade visual search performance due to scene distortion, occlusion and addition of visual clutter. In contrast, Subtle Cueing has been previously proposed as an alter-native to explicit cueing, but little is known about how well it works for head-tracked head worn displays (HWDs). We investigated the effect of Subtle Cueing for head-tracked head worn displays, using visual search research methods in simulated augmented reality environments. Our user study found that Subtle Cueing improves visual search performance, and serves as a feasible cueing mechanism for AR environments using HWDs.