Towards Understanding Decision Problems As a Goal of Visualization Design

TL;DR

This paper proposes a characterization scheme for decision problems in visualization, focusing on data, users, and context, to improve decision-support design and understanding.

Contribution

It introduces a novel scheme to describe decision problems, aiding better specification and design of visualizations for decision-making tasks.

Findings

Applied scheme to existing decision tasks

Identified gaps in current visualization approaches

Highlighted future research opportunities

Abstract

Decision-making is a central yet under-defined goal in visualization research. While existing task models address decision processes, they often neglect the conditions framing a decision. To better support decision-making tasks, we propose a characterization scheme that describes decision problems through key properties of the data, users, and task context. This scheme helps visualization researchers specify decision-support claims more precisely and informs the design of appropriate visual encodings and interactions. We demonstrate the utility of our approach by applying it to characterize decision tasks targeted by existing design studies, highlighting opportunities for future research in decision-centric visualization.