Accounting for Availability Biases in Information Visualization

TL;DR

This paper explores how visualizations can mitigate availability bias by influencing memory, guiding design guidelines, and creating heuristic-inspired decision tools to improve unbiased decision-making.

Contribution

It introduces three novel approaches for visualization to reduce availability bias, including memory influence, bias-aware guidelines, and heuristic-based decision tools.

Findings

Visualizations can modify memory recall to improve long-term intuition.

New guidelines for visualization design to counteract biases.

Proposes heuristic-inspired decision tools for better choices.

Abstract

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.