A heuristic strategy for developing human facial images on a CRT

Sketching a recognizable human face involves artistic talents and an intuitive knowledge of which aspects of the face are important in recognition. A man-machine system, called WHATSISFACE, has been developed with which man-machine system, called WHATSISFACE, has been developed with which a nonartist can create, on a graphic display, any male Caucasian facial image resembling the face of a photograph in front of him. The computer system contains pre-stored facial features, an average face used as a starting point and a heuristic strategy which guides the user through a carefully constructed sequence of questions, choices and feature manipulations. The user makes all the visual decisions and can change the individual features or hierarchically organized sets of features using analog input devices. © 1975