Revealing uncertainty for information visualization

Uncertainty in data occurs in domains ranging from natural science to medicine to computer science. By developing ways to include uncertainty in our information visualizations we can provide more accurate visual depictions of critical datasets. One hindrance to visualizing uncertainty is that we must first understand what uncertainty is and how it is expressed by users. We reviewed existing work from several domains on uncertainty and conducted qualitative interviews with 18 people from diverse domains who self-identified as working with uncertainty. We created a classification of uncertainty representing commonalities in uncertainty across domains and that will be useful for developing appropriate visualizations of uncertainty. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.m [Information Interfaces and Presentation (e.g., HCI)]: Miscellaneous. General Terms Experimentation, Standardization. Keywords Information visualization, uncertainty visualization, qualitative research, user-centered de...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: AVI
• Authors: Meredith M. Skeels, Bongshin Lee, Greg Smith, George G. Robertson
• Keywords: AVI 2008, Information Visualization, Software Engineering, Uncertainty Representing Commonalities, Uncertainty Visualization