Are single images sufficient to communicate qualities of texture-rich products?

Single still images have been used extensively over the last decade to present texture-rich products on the web. However, the interpretation of these images is ambiguous and many product properties are difficult to discern. Recently video and interactive animation have started to change the way we view and perceive these products but do they communicate texture qualities more reliably than single still images?

For this study we investigated how reliably we can communicate qualities of textiles using the real material, single images, multiple images, movies and interactive multi-touch animations (‘shoogles’). Twenty-one participants were asked to judge eight qualities (hard, furry, rough, textured, crisp, flexible, soft, smooth) for each presentation mode. We found that humans perceive qualities more accurately if presented with multiple views of textiles compared to single images and that perception was further improved using movies. It would seem natural that adding observer control (multi-touch ‘pinching’) would further increase engagement and hence perception over video. However, our results showed no such improvement, indeed observers seemed to become more confused. A possible explanation for these results is in correspondence to the "modality appropriateness" interpretation, were touch is more predominant than vision when using multi-touch. Even though multi-touch adds noise to our perception, observers were still able to more accurately perceive qualities of textiles than when viewing single images. Given the apparent increased observer engagement it is likely that this digital presentation will find increasing use in e-retail/e-marketing and may be particularly attractive for digital presentation of important archives.