Uncertainty Visualizations

Uncertainty is inherent in all real work contexts; it creates ambiguities that make decision making difficult. To help decision makers manage ambiguity, the authors developed and evaluated a domain-independent decision support system (DSS), the Uncertainty DSS. It is designed to help decision makers recognize situations in which uncertainty creates ambiguity in their choices and to identify information that can help reduce that ambiguity. It does so by providing an uncertainty visualization, which shows when the range of possible values for two or more alternatives overlap, indicating that one cannot identify the best alternative given the current information. To evaluate the Uncertainty DSS, the authors created a pared-down version, the Certainty DSS, which provides no uncertainty visualizations. They recruited 22 engineering designers and asked them compare alternative designs from real, ongoing design projects using no DSS, the Certainty DSS, and the Uncertainty DSS. The authors found that without the visualizations, participants did not distinguish between ambiguous and unambiguous choices. However, the Uncertainty DSS improved participants’ ability to recognize ambiguous decision situations. Additionally, it increased the likelihood that participants would form plans to seek clarifying information. These results suggest that a relatively simple visualization can change the way in which designers think about decision choices.