Interactive Visualization for Group Decision Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (06) ◽  
pp. 1839-1864 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Bajracharya ◽  
G. Carenini ◽  
B. Chamberlain ◽  
K. Chen ◽  
D. Klein ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Analysis ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
Interactive Visualization ◽  
Visualization Tool ◽  
Domain Experts ◽  
Individual Preferences ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Multi Stakeholder

Identifying the best solutions to large infrastructure decisions is a context-dependent multi-dimensional multi-stakeholder challenge in which competing objectives must be identified and trade-offs made. Our aim is to identify and explore features in an interactive visualization tool to help make group decision analysis more participatory, transparent, and comprehensible. We extended the interactive visualization tool ValueCharts to create Group ValueCharts. The new tool was introduced in two real-world scenarios in which stakeholders were in the midst of wrestling with decisions about infrastructure investment. We modeled the alternatives under consideration, for both scenarios, using prescribed criteria identified by domain experts. Participants in both groups were given instructions on how to use the tool to represent their preferences. Preferences for all participants were then displayed and discussed. The discussions were audio-recorded and the participants were surveyed to evaluate usability. The results indicate that participants felt the tool improved group interaction and information exchange and made the discussion more participatory. They expressed that visualizing individual preferences improved the ability to analyze decision outcomes based on everyone’s preferences. Additionally, the participants strongly concurred that the tool revealed disagreements and agreements and helped identify sticking points. These results suggest that a group decision tool that allows group members to input their individual preferences and then collectively probe into any differences makes the process of decision-making more participatory, transparent, and comprehensible and increases the quality and quantity of information exchange.

scholarly journals Group Decision-Making

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Tindale ◽  
Jeremy R. Winget
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Group Decision Making ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Group Decisions ◽  
Systems Research ◽  
Group Members

Group decisions are ubiquitous in everyday life. Even when decisions are made individually, decision-makers often receive advice or suggestions from others. Thus, decisions are often social in nature and involve multiple group members. The literature on group decision-making is conceptualized as falling along two dimensions: how much interaction or information exchange is allowed among the group members, and how the final decision is made. On one end, group decisions can be made simply by aggregating member preferences or judgments without any interaction among members, with members having no control or say in the final judgment. One the other end, groups’ decisions can involve extensive member interaction and information exchanges, and the final decision is reached by group consensus. In between these two endpoints, various other strategies are also possible, including prediction markets, Delphi groups, and judge–advisor systems. Research has shown that each dimension has different implications for decision quality and process depending on the decision task and context. Research exploring these two dimension has also helped to illuminate those aspects of group decision-making that can lead to better-quality decisions.

scholarly journals Group Decision-Making

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Scott Tindale ◽  
Jeremy R. Winget
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Group Decision Making ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Group Decisions ◽  
Systems Research ◽  
Group Members

Group decisions are ubiquitous in everyday life. Even when decisions are made individually, decision-makers often receive advice or suggestions from others. Thus, decisions are often social in nature and involve multiple group members. The literature on group decision-making is conceptualized as falling along two dimensions: how much interaction or information exchange is allowed among the group members, and how the final decision is made. On one end, group decisions can be made simply by aggregating member preferences or judgments without any interaction among members, with members having no control or say in the final judgment. One the other end, groups’ decisions can involve extensive member interaction and information exchanges, and the final decision is reached by group consensus. In between these two endpoints, various other strategies are also possible, including prediction markets, Delphi groups, and judge–advisor systems. Research has shown that each dimension has different implications for decision quality and process depending on the decision task and context. Research exploring these two dimension has also helped to illuminate those aspects of group decision-making that can lead to better-quality decisions.

The Effects of Incentives on Information Exchange and Decision Quality in Groups

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khim Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Information Exchange ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
Decision Quality ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Compensation Contracts ◽  
Economic Motivation ◽  
Individual Incentive ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Individual

ABSTRACT: This study uses an experiment to examine the effects of different compensation contracts (flat wage, group incentive, and noncompetitive individual incentive) on decision quality when information is distributed among different individuals. The results indicate that information exchange and decision quality are better under the group incentive than the individual incentive, even when both incentives provide an economic motivation for information exchange. Information exchange and decision quality are also better under the flat wage than the individual incentive, despite the stronger economic motivation for information exchange under the individual incentive. Analyses indicate that the effect of compensation contracts on decision quality is partially mediated through information exchange between group members. The results are consistent with higher group membership saliency under the group incentive and the flat wage than the individual incentive, and group membership saliency promoting information exchange between group members. The results also suggest that in a group decision-making context, differences in decision quality across compensation contracts may be better explained by psychological factors rather than economic factors.

scholarly journals Multi-Criteria Framework for Selection of City-Wide Sanitation Solutions in Coastal Towns in Northern Angola

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5627
Author(s):  
Rita Ventura Matos ◽  
Filipa Ferreira ◽  
Liliana Alves ◽  
Elsa Ramos ◽  
Lucrécio Costa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Analysis ◽  
Analysis Tool ◽  
Planning Stage ◽  
Multi Criteria Decision Analysis ◽  
Sanitation Services ◽  
Decision Aiding ◽  
Coastal Cities ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Multi Stakeholder ◽  
Treatment Alternatives

In this paper, an expedited multi-criteria decision analysis framework, capable of tackling several dimensions for the choice of sanitation services, at an early planning stage is presented. The approach combines geographic information systems aided analysis for onsite solutions, with a multi-criteria decision analysis tool capable of suggesting and ranking several viable offsite treatment alternatives, according to the desired criteria. The framework was applied to four coastal cities in Northern Angola, one of the sub-Saharan countries of the west coast of Africa, thus obtaining an indication for city-wide solutions, as an aid to achieve the goal of ensuring full sanitation coverage in those four locations. It included possible onsite collection and storage interfaces, namely Ventilated Improved Pit latrines, fossa alterna, septic tanks or conventional sewer systems. The study also contributed to an informed decision regarding optimal offsite treatment facility type, namely based on dedicated or combined wastewater and faecal sludge treatment (co-treatment), as well as different options for locations and sanitation technologies. Alternatives were compared and ranked according to ten main criteria concerning social, economic, technological and environmental aspects. This work helped demonstrate the usefulness of decision-aiding tools in the multi-stakeholder and complex context of sanitation in a developing country.

scholarly journals Individual Preferences for Giving

2007 ◽  
Vol 97 (5) ◽  
pp. 1858-1876 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Fisman ◽  
Shachar Kariv ◽  
Daniel Markovits
Keyword(s):  
Utility Maximization ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Graphical Representations ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Individual Preferences ◽  
Dictator Games ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Budget Sets ◽  
Baseline Experiment

We utilize graphical representations of Dictator Games which generate rich individual-level data. Our baseline experiment employs budget sets over feasible payoff-pairs. We test these data for consistency with utility maximization, and we recover the underlying preferences for giving (trade-offs between own payoffs and the payoffs of others). Two further experiments augment the analysis. An extensive elaboration employs three-person budget sets to distinguish preferences for giving from social preferences (trade-offs between the payoffs of others). And an intensive elaboration employs step-shaped sets to distinguish between behaviors that are compatible with well-behaved preferences and those compatible only with not well-behaved cases. (JEL C72, D64)

scholarly journals ToxPi GUI: an interactive visualization tool for transparent integration of data from diverse sources of evidence

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. Reif ◽  
M. Sypa ◽  
E. F. Lock ◽  
F. A. Wright ◽  
A. Wilson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Interactive Visualization ◽  
Visualization Tool

A Formal Approach to Handling Conflicts in Multiattribute Group Decision Making

2005 ◽  
Vol 128 (4) ◽  
pp. 678-688 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tung-King See ◽  
Kemper Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Group Decision Making ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
Decision Problems ◽  
Team Leaders ◽  
Formal Approach ◽  
Aggregation Functions ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Problem Data

Supporting the decision of a group in engineering design is a challenging and complicated problem when issues like consensus and compromise must be taken into account. In this paper, we present the foundations of the group hypothetical equivalents and inequivalents method and two fundamental extensions making it applicable to new classes of group decision problems. The first extension focuses on updating the formulation to place unequal importance on the preferences of the group members. The formulation presented in this paper allows team leaders to emphasize the input from certain group members based on experience or other factors. The second extension focuses on the theoretical implications of using a general class of aggregation functions. Illustration and validation of the developments are presented using a vehicle selection problem. Data from ten engineering design groups are used to demonstrate the application of the method.

scholarly journals Capturing User Intent when Brushing In Scatterplots

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiran Gadhave ◽  
Jochen Görtler ◽  
Oliver Deussen ◽  
Miriah Meyer ◽  
Jeff Phillips ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visualization Tool ◽  
Domain Experts ◽  
User Intent ◽  
Selection Accuracy ◽  
Provenance Data ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Concise Representation ◽  
Mixed Initiative ◽  
Selection Of

Being able to capture or predict a user's intent behind a brush in a visualization tool has important implications in two scenarios. First, predicting intents can be used to auto-complete a partial selection in a mixed-initiative approach, with potential benefits to selection speed, correctness, and confidence. Second, capturing the intent of a selection can be used to improve recall, reproducibility, and even re-use. Augmenting provenance logs with semi-automatically captured intents makes it possible to save the reasoning behind selections. In this paper, we introduce a method to infer intent for selections and brushes in scatterplots. We first introduce a taxonomy of types of patterns that users might specify, which we elicited in a formative study conducted with professional data analysts and scientists. Based on this, we identify algorithms that can classify these patterns, and introduce various approaches to score the match of each pattern to an analyst's selection of items. We introduce a system that implements these methods for scatterplots and ranks alternative patterns against each other. Analysts then can use these predictions to auto-complete partial selections, and to conveniently capture their intent and provide annotations, thus making a concise representation of that intent available to be stored as provenance data. We evaluate our approach using interviews with domain experts and in a quantitative crowd-sourced study, in which we show that using auto-complete leads to improved selection accuracy for most types of patterns.

scholarly journals Learning While Deciding in Groups

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Tindale ◽  
Jeremy R. Winget
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Group Decision Making ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
Decision Processes ◽  
Learning Potential ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Actual Learning

Groups are used to make many important societal decisions. Similar to individuals, by paying attention to the information available during the decision processes and the consequences of the decisions, groups can learn from their decisions as well. In addition, group members can learn from each other by exchanging information and being exposed to different perspectives. However, groups make decisions in many different ways and the potential and actual learning that takes place will vary as a function of the manner in which groups reach consensus. This chapter reviews the literature on group decision making with a special emphasis on how and when group decision making leads to learning. We argue that learning is possible in virtually any group decision making environment but freely interacting groups create the greatest potential for learning. We also discuss when and why group may not always take advantage of the learning potential.

scholarly journals Deep-diving beaked whales dive together but forage apart

2021 ◽  
Vol 288 (1942) ◽  
pp. 20201905
Author(s):  
Jesús Alcázar-Treviño ◽  
Mark Johnson ◽  
Patricia Arranz ◽  
Victoria E. Warren ◽  
Carlos J. Pérez-González ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Beaked Whale ◽  
Acoustic Interference ◽  
Deep Diving ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Group Competition ◽  
Foraging Performance ◽  
Cooperative Foraging ◽  
Beaked Whales ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Benefits And Costs

Echolocating animals that forage in social groups can potentially benefit from eavesdropping on other group members, cooperative foraging or social defence, but may also face problems of acoustic interference and intra-group competition for prey. Here, we investigate these potential trade-offs of sociality for extreme deep-diving Blainville′s and Cuvier's beaked whales. These species perform highly synchronous group dives as a presumed predator-avoidance behaviour, but the benefits and costs of this on foraging have not been investigated. We show that group members could hear their companions for a median of at least 91% of the vocal foraging phase of their dives. This enables whales to coordinate their mean travel direction despite differing individual headings as they pursue prey on a minute-by-minute basis. While beaked whales coordinate their echolocation-based foraging periods tightly, individual click and buzz rates are both independent of the number of whales in the group. Thus, their foraging performance is not affected by intra-group competition or interference from group members, and they do not seem to capitalize directly on eavesdropping on the echoes produced by the echolocation clicks of their companions. We conclude that the close diving and vocal synchronization of beaked whale groups that quantitatively reduces predation risk has little impact on foraging performance.

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