Assessing the Effect of Visualizations on Bayesian Reasoning through Crowdsourcing

People have difficulty understanding statistical information and are unaware of their wrong judgments, particularly in Bayesian reasoning. Psychology studies suggest that the way Bayesian problems are represented can impact comprehension, but few visual designs have been evaluated and only populations with a specific background have been involved. In this study, a textual and six visual representations for three classic problems were compared using a diverse subject pool through crowdsourcing. Visualizations included area-proportional Euler diagrams, glyph representations, and hybrid diagrams combining both. Our study failed to replicate previous findings in that subjects' accuracy was remarkably lower and visualizations exhibited no measurable benefit. A second experiment confirmed that simply adding a visualization to a textual Bayesian problem is of little help, even when the text refers to the visualization, but suggests that visualizations are more effective when the text is given without numerical values. We discuss our findings and the need for more such experiments to be carried out on heterogeneous populations of non-experts

Guidelines For Pursuing and Revealing Data Abstractions

Many data abstraction types, such as networks or set relationships, remain unfamiliar to data workers beyond the visualization research community. We conduct a survey and series of interviews about how people describe their data, either directly or indirectly. We refer to the latter as latent data abstractions. We conduct a Grounded Theory analysis that (1) interprets the extent to which latent data abstractions exist, (2) reveals the far-reaching effects that the interventionist pursuit of such abstractions can have on data workers, (3) describes why and when data workers may resist such explorations, and (4) suggests how to take advantage of opportunities and mitigate risks through transparency about visualization research perspectives and agendas. We then use the themes and codes discovered in the Grounded Theory analysis to develop guidelines for data abstraction in visualization projects. To continue the discussion, we make our dataset open along with a visual interface for further exploration

Operationalizing the circular city model for naples' city-port: A hybrid development strategy

The city-port context involves a decisive reality for the economic development of territories and nations, capable of significantly influencing the conditions of well-being and quality of life, and of making the Circular City Model (CCM) operational, preserving and enhancing seas and marine resources in a sustainable way. This can be achieved through the construction of appropriate production and consumption models, with attention to relations with the urban and territorial system. This paper presents an adaptive decision-making process for Naples (Italy) commercial port's development strategies, aimed at re-establishing a sustainable city-port relationship and making Circular Economy (CE) principles operative. The approach has aimed at implementing a CCM by operationalizing European recommendations provided within both the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework-specifically focusing on goals 9, 11 and 12-and the Maritime Spatial Planning European Directive 2014/89, to face conflicts about the overlapping areas of the city-port through multidimensional evaluations' principles and tools. In this perspective, a four-step methodological framework has been structured applying a place-based approach with mixed evaluation methods, eliciting soft and hard knowledge domains, which have been expressed and assessed by a core set of Sustainability Indicators (SI), linked to SDGs. The contribution outcomes have been centred on the assessment of three design alternatives for the East Naples port and the development of a hybrid regeneration scenario consistent with CE and sustainability principles. The structured decision-making process has allowed us to test how an adaptive approach can expand the knowledge base underpinning policy design and decisions to achieve better outcomes and cultivate a broad civic and technical engagement, that can enhance the legitimacy and transparency of policies

The design-by-adaptation approach to universal access: learning from videogame technology

This paper proposes an alternative approach to the design of universally accessible interfaces to that provided by formal design frameworks applied ab initio to the development of new software. This approach, design-byadaptation, involves the transfer of interface technology and/or design principles from one application domain to another, in situations where the recipient domain is similar to the host domain in terms of modelled systems, tasks and users. Using the example of interaction in 3D virtual environments, the paper explores how principles underlying the design of videogame interfaces may be applied to a broad family of visualization and analysis software which handles geographical data (virtual geographic environments, or VGEs). One of the motivations behind the current study is that VGE technology lags some way behind videogame technology in the modelling of 3D environments, and has a less-developed track record in providing the variety of interaction methods needed to undertake varied tasks in 3D virtual worlds by users with varied levels of experience. The current analysis extracted a set of interaction principles from videogames which were used to devise a set of 3D task interfaces that have been implemented in a prototype VGE for formal evaluation