Improving the usability of climate indicator visualizations through diagnostic design principles

Abstract

Visual climate indicators have become a popular way to communicate trends in important climate phenomena. Producing accessible visualizations for a general audience is challenging, especially when many are based on graphics designed for scientists, present complex and abstract concepts, and utilize suboptimal design choices. This study tests whether diagnostic visualization guidelines can be used to identify communication shortcomings for climate indicators and to specify effective design modifications. Design guidelines were used to diagnose problems in three hard-to-understand indicators, and to create three improved modifications per indicator. Using online surveys, the efficacy of the modifications was tested in a control versus treatment setup that measured the degree to which respondents understood, found accessible, liked, and trusted the graphics. Furthermore, we assessed whether respondents' numeracy, climate attitudes, and political party affiliation affected the impact of design improvements. Results showed that simplifying modifications had a large positive effect on understanding, ease of understanding, and liking, but not trust. Better designs improved understanding similarly for people with different degrees of numerical capacity. Moreover, while climate skepticism and affiliation with the Republican party were associated with less positive subjective responses and greater mistrust toward climate communication, design modification improved understanding equally for people across the climate attitude and ideological spectrum. These findings point to diagnostic design guidelines as a useful tool for creating more accessible, engaging climate graphics for the public.

The usability gap in water resources open data and actionable science initiatives

“…The second phase is to examine the current water resources visualizations to identify likely usability challenges, given the information gleaned from experts and users in Phase 1. For the Watches, we diagnosed usability challenges of static geovisualizations using Dasgupta et al (2015) and literature synthesized by Gerst et al (2017). The usability of the overall system was diagnosed using guidelines from Johnson (2014) and Ware (2013).…”