Visualization is a powerful tool to help people better communicate and understand data. But the perception and interpretation of data is riddled with bias. Data visualizations are ambiguous objects such that different people viewing the same visualization can come to different conclusions. The ambiguity is likely associated with people's perceptual biases when viewing visualizations, and that their viewing behaviour can be heavily influenced by their background knowledge and experiences. In addition to the ambiguous nature of visualizations, designing a visualization is a difficult task. This process involves multiple design decisions, and each design decision can dictate viewer takeaways from the visualization. In my dissertation, I share several empirical studies investigating how visualization design could influence viewer perception and interpretation of the same data, referencing methods and insights from psychology and computer sciences. From these studies, I extract usable design guidelines that could help future researchers and practitioners design more effective visualizations to communicate data.

Creator

• Xiong, Cindy

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-yqk2-5862

Subject

• Psychobiology

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:15546
• etdadmin_upload_817599

Keyword

• empirical studies
• perception
• decision making
• design
• affordance
• data visualization

Date created

• 2021-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright