Accounting for Availability Biases in Information Visualization

Evanthia Dimara (1) , Pierre Dragicevic (1) , Anastasia Bezerianos (2, 3, 4)

1 AVIZ - Analysis and Visualization
2 LRI - Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique
3 ILDA - Interacting with Large Data
4 Université Paris-Saclay

The availability heuristic is a strategy that people use to make quick decisions but often lead to systematic errors. We propose three ways that visualization could facilitate unbiased decision-making. First, visualizations can alter the way our memory stores the events for later recall, so as to improve users' long-term intuitions. Second, the known biases could lead to new visualization guidelines. Third, we suggest the design of decision-making tools that are inspired by heuristics, e.g. suggesting intuitive approximations, rather than target to present exhaustive comparisons of all possible outcomes, or automated solutions for choosing decisions.

Mots clés: H52 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Inter-; faces -Graphical user interfaces; General Terms; Design; Human Factors; Keywords; Availability Heuristic; Cognitive Bias; Visualizations; Decision-Making

Domaines: Interface homme-machine [cs.HC]; Sciences cognitives; Psychologie

Evanthia Dimara, Pierre Dragicevic, Anastasia Bezerianos. Accounting for Availability Biases in Information Visualization. IEEE VIS 2014, 2014, Paris, France. ⟨hal-01377996⟩