MotionReader: Visual Acceleration Cues for Alleviating Passenger E-Reader Motion Sickness

Abstract

We investigate alleviating the motion sickness experienced by passengers who read using tablet computers or phones, by displaying a visual cue of the acceleration that the passenger undergoes while traveling. This visual cue is meant to eliminate the sensory conflict between the perceived acceleration and the lack of matching visuals. We investigate two visual acceleration cues, the text inertia cue, that displaces the text in the direction opposite to the acceleration, and Gizmo cue, that renders a ball-spring Gizmo adjacent to the text, and that reacts to the acceleration. We have conducted a user study that attempts to determine which of these interventions, if any, are effective at reducing the symptoms of motion sickness in participants who used our e-reader application during a 20-minute bus ride.