Image Blurring Method for Enhancing Digital Content Viewing Experience

Many systems have been studied for enhancing a user’s interest in digital content by using HMD, 3DTV, and so on. However, for these systems to be able to enhance a user’s interest, the creator needs to elaborate the content. In this paper, we present a method that extends the experience of digital content by simply superimposing blurring effects that follow the gaze point of the user. To clarify how the experience of viewing still images and videos was enhanced by our method, we compared user impressions when viewing digital content with and without our method. We also examined physiological impressions such as visibility and discomfort. The experimental results showed that the participants’ impressions of the video content were changed by superimposing the blurring effect on the peripherally viewed area. In particular, almost all psychological impression items (immersion, stereoscopic effect and so on) were scored higher when the blur was superimposed than when it was not.