skip to main content
10.1145/1520340.1520616acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PageschiConference Proceedingsconference-collections
extended-abstract

Uncertainty visualization: why might it fail?

Published: 04 April 2009 Publication History

Abstract

There is a gulf between the rhetoric in visualization about the importance of uncertainty, and the practice of visualization in which uncertainty is rarely seen other than as a laboratory exercise. We reflect on why something viewed as fundamental in science and engineering is rarely if ever adopted in visualization practice. Our analysis is informed both by research progress and by our own experience in an ongoing industrial case study on modelling and mapping underground assets, where it would appear that uncertainty plays a major role. In this case study, we try to identify promoting and limiting factors. We conclude that the value of uncertainty visualization is severely limited by the quality and scope of uncertainty data, by the limited confidence in the data itself, and by the perceptual and cognitive confusion that the depiction of this data can generate. We hope to broaden the discussion on the utility of uncertainty in visualization from the purely technical and perceptual issues to social and organizational factors.

References

[1]
Bostrom, A., Anselin, L., Farris, J. Visualising seismic risk and uncertainty: A review of related research. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1128,1 (2008), 29--40.
[2]
Deitrick, S., Edsall, R. The influence of uncertainty visualization on decision making: An empirical evaluation. Progress in Spatial Data Handling (2006), 719--738.
[3]
Evans, B.J. Dynamic display of spatial data-reliability: Does it benefit the map user? Computers and Geosciences -- Special Issue on Exploratory Cartographic Visualization 23, 4 (1997), 409--422.
[4]
Griethe, H., Schumann, H. The Visualization of uncertain data: Methods and problems. In Proceedings of SimVis'06 (2006), 143--156.
[5]
MacEachren, A., Robinson, A., Hopper, S., Gardner, R.M., Gahegan, M., Hetzler, E. Visualizing geospatial information uncertainty: What we know and what we need to know. Cartography and Geographic Information Science 32, 3 (2005), 139--160.
[6]
VISTA Project. http://www.vistadtiproject.org/.
[7]
Wittenbrink, C., Pang, A., Lodha, S. Glyphs for visualizing uncertainty in vector fields. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 2 (1996), 266--279.
[8]
Wray, K. Using the creative design process to develop illustrative rendering techniques to represent information quality. Journal of Young Investigators 17 (2008).

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)A study on rethinking EDA in digital transformation eraKorean Journal of Applied Statistics10.5351/KJAS.2024.37.1.08737:1(87-102)Online publication date: 29-Feb-2024
  • (2024)Robot-Assisted Decision-Making: Unveiling the Role of Uncertainty Visualisation and EmbodimentProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642911(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2023)Embedding communication concepts in forecasting training increases students' understanding of ecological uncertaintyEcosphere10.1002/ecs2.462814:8Online publication date: Aug-2023
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Uncertainty visualization: why might it fail?

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI EA '09: CHI '09 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2009
    2470 pages
    ISBN:9781605582474
    DOI:10.1145/1520340
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 04 April 2009

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. maps
    2. plans
    3. uncertainty
    4. visualization

    Qualifiers

    • Extended-abstract

    Conference

    CHI '09
    Sponsor:

    Acceptance Rates

    CHI EA '09 Paper Acceptance Rate 385 of 1,130 submissions, 34%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

    Upcoming Conference

    CHI 2025
    ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 26 - May 1, 2025
    Yokohama , Japan

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)48
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)4
    Reflects downloads up to 25 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)A study on rethinking EDA in digital transformation eraKorean Journal of Applied Statistics10.5351/KJAS.2024.37.1.08737:1(87-102)Online publication date: 29-Feb-2024
    • (2024)Robot-Assisted Decision-Making: Unveiling the Role of Uncertainty Visualisation and EmbodimentProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642911(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2023)Embedding communication concepts in forecasting training increases students' understanding of ecological uncertaintyEcosphere10.1002/ecs2.462814:8Online publication date: Aug-2023
    • (2022)Designing for Interaction: Determining the Most Influential Aesthetic Factors for Effective Visualisation of UncertaintyHuman Interface and the Management of Information: Visual and Information Design10.1007/978-3-031-06424-1_27(364-383)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2022
    • (2021)Recent advances and challenges in uncertainty visualization: a surveyJournal of Visualization10.1007/s12650-021-00755-124:5(861-890)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2021
    • (2020)Data visualization and transparency inthe newsData Visualization in Society10.5117/9789463722902_ch11Online publication date: 2020
    • (2020)Visualizations of Uncertainties in Precision Agriculture: Lessons Learned from Farm MachineryApplied Sciences10.3390/app1017613210:17(6132)Online publication date: 3-Sep-2020
    • (2020)Why Authors Don't Visualize UncertaintyIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2019.293428726:1(130-139)Online publication date: Jan-2020
    • (2020)Vagueness visualization in building models across different design stagesAdvanced Engineering Informatics10.1016/j.aei.2020.10110745(101107)Online publication date: Aug-2020
    • (2019)Extending Input Space of Tangible Dials and Sliders for Uncertain InputProceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3294109.3300985(189-196)Online publication date: 17-Mar-2019
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media