Padilla Lace M, Ruginski Ian T, Creem-Regehr Sarah H
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, 380 S. 1530 E., Room 502, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 USA.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2017;2(1):40. doi: 10.1186/s41235-017-0076-1. Epub 2017 Oct 4.
Ensemble and summary displays are two widely used methods to represent visual-spatial uncertainty; however, there is disagreement about which is the most effective technique to communicate uncertainty to the general public. Visualization scientists create ensemble displays by plotting multiple data points on the same Cartesian coordinate plane. Despite their use in scientific practice, it is more common in public presentations to use visualizations of summary displays, which scientists create by plotting statistical parameters of the ensemble members. While prior work has demonstrated that viewers make different decisions when viewing summary and ensemble displays, it is unclear what components of the displays lead to diverging judgments. This study aims to compare the salience of visual features - or visual elements that attract bottom-up attention - as one possible source of diverging judgments made with ensemble and summary displays in the context of hurricane track forecasts. We report that salient visual features of both ensemble and summary displays influence participant judgment. Specifically, we find that salient features of summary displays of geospatial uncertainty can be misunderstood as displaying size information. Further, salient features of ensemble displays evoke judgments that are indicative of accurate interpretations of the underlying probability distribution of the ensemble data. However, when participants use ensemble displays to make point-based judgments, they may overweight individual ensemble members in their decision-making process. We propose that ensemble displays are a promising alternative to summary displays in a geospatial context but that decisions about visualization methods should be informed by the viewer's task.
集合显示和摘要显示是表示视觉空间不确定性的两种广泛使用的方法；然而，对于哪种方法是向公众传达不确定性的最有效技术，存在不同意见。可视化科学家通过在同一笛卡尔坐标平面上绘制多个数据点来创建集合显示。尽管它们在科学实践中得到了应用，但在公开演示中更常见的是使用摘要显示的可视化，科学家通过绘制集合成员的统计参数来创建这些可视化。虽然先前的研究表明，观众在查看摘要显示和集合显示时会做出不同的决策，但尚不清楚显示的哪些组件会导致不同的判断。本研究旨在比较视觉特征（即吸引自下而上注意力的视觉元素）的显著性，作为在飓风路径预报背景下使用集合显示和摘要显示做出不同判断的一个可能来源。我们报告说，集合显示和摘要显示的显著视觉特征都会影响参与者的判断。具体而言，我们发现地理空间不确定性摘要显示的显著特征可能会被误解为显示大小信息。此外，集合显示的显著特征引发的判断表明对集合数据的潜在概率分布有准确的解释。然而当参与者使用集合显示进行基于点的判断时，他们在决策过程中可能会过度重视单个集合成员。我们建议，在地理空间背景下，集合显示是摘要显示的一个有前途的替代方案，但可视化方法的决策应根据观众的任务来确定。
