Visual experiments on the web: design of a web-based visual experiment management system

Abstract

In psychological research, it is common to perform investigations on the World Wide Web in the form of questionnaires to collect data from a large number of participants. By comparison, visual experiments have been mainly performed in the laboratory, where it is possible to use calibrated devices and controlled viewing conditions. Recently, the Web has been exploited also for "uncontrolled" visual experiments, despite the lack of control on image rendering at the client side, assuming that the large number of participants involved in a Web investigation "averages out" the parameters that the experiments would require to keep fixed if, following a traditional approach, it was performed under controlled conditions. This paper describes the design and implementation of a Web-based visual experiment management system, which acts as a repository of visual experiment, and is designed with the purpose of facilitating the publishing of online investigations.