Material Appearance: Ordering and Clustering

Abstract

Appearance is a complex psychovisual phenomenon impacted by various objective and subjective factors that are not yet fully understood. In this work we use real objects and unconstrained conditions to study appearance perception in human subjects, allowing free interaction between objects and observers. Human observers were asked to describe resin objects from an artwork collection and to complete two visual tasks of appearance-based clustering and ordering. The process was filmed for subsequent analysis with the consent of the observers. While clustering task helps us identify attributes people use to assess appearance similarity and difference, the ordering task is used to identify potential cues to create an appearance ordering system.

Finally, we generate research hypotheses about how people perceive appearance and outline future studies to validate them. Preliminary observations revealed interesting cross-individual consistency in appearance assessment, while personal background of the observer might be affecting deviation from the general appearance assessment trends. On the other hand, no appearance ordering system stood out from the rest that might be explained with the sparse sampling of our dataset.