Engineering visual characteristics to match vision

Methods for objectively rating the qualities of new displays (type of technology, geometries, symbols, fonts, and layout factors) have conventionally been developed by the ergonomics community. For the display design community and users working under uncommon circumstances, however, it would be profitable to have a predictive instrument for rating new designs before these are built. This need has led to the concept of a standard observer defined in software, which can replace multisubject ergonomic tests, at least in the conceptual phases of the design process. The author describes the underlying considerations of the design of such a vision model, which is now being calibrated. Several stages in the two-dimensional processing of the observed image by the eye are shown. The model can also make predictions of the visibility of dynamic (blinking) small (parts of) symbols