AN ERGONOMIC INVESTIGATION OF MISCONVERGENCE ON COLOR VISUAL-DISPLAY TERMINALS

Misconvergence occurs when the primary color guns inside the visual display terminal are fired at pixels on the monitor but miss their target. Nearly all color monitors exhibit a degree of misconvergence but in spite of some research into its effects on the user no standard of acceptability currently exists. In an experiment subjects were given eight screens of varyingly misconverged text. The time taken to complete editing each screen of text, the number of errors correctly changed and subjective rating of screen quality were recorded. The results of the performance and rating tasks together suggest that no more than 60% misconvergence should be accepted on VDT screens although performance decrements are visible from 20% misconvergence.