On Time Reading Performance: A Comparison of the Clock Face and Digit Representations

Abstract

Time plays an essential part of our lives. We are typically surrounded by two types of time representation, clock faces and digits. Previous work focused on children’s ability to read time, but adults’ ability to read time have received less attention especially considering recent technological paradigm shifts and altered technology usage patterns. We therefore designed a simple time reading experiment. Our results show that participants read digit representations of times more rapidly with a lower error rate than clock face representations. These patterns were also exhibited by participants who preferred clock faces. Most errors were associated with the hands at angles of 60 and 30°. Most of the participants also reported that they prefer digit representations. Implications of these results are that the choice of time representation can be an important factor in time critical context where there is a low tolerance for error.