Perspective Change
We usually see with two eyes - on a 2D screen, however, no information is lost when we look with only one.
Background
Looking with one eye is a simple action. Seeing the screen with only one eye might therefore be used to switch the view to an alternate perspective on the screen contents: a filter for quick toggling.
Concept
In this example, closing one eye filters out information on screen to a subset of the original data, such as an overview over the browser page or only the five most recently edited files.
It was to see how the users would accept the functionalities at the cost of having to close one eye, a not totally natural action.
Implementation and user test ´
The users were introduced to a web browser showing a website about 4 to 5 screen pages long. They could close one eye to zoom out to the full page (similar to the Exposé function of Mac OS X) and move the mouse to an area of their interest. By opening the eye again, the browser zoomed to the highlighted area.
In the second example, they were shown a cluttered desktop and informed that closing one eye would fade out all files but the five most recently edited ones.
Summary of findings
The feature was popular among the test users. Especially more experienced and professional users were engaged by the functionality to view only a subset of the available files by closing one eye. Most users liked the zoom-out functionality; it was preferred over the zoom-in and the sniper functionalities described here.
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Whether it's easily applicable to use each eye for an individual functionality is yet to be tested; also the different processing of stimuli in the hemispheres (of which each is connected to one eye) might play an interesting role here.
Yet, not everybody is able to simply close one eye without closing the other at least a little bit, too - which would render its application less practical.
