Empirical Evaluation of Interactive Visualizations for Preferential Choice

An Empirical Evaluation of Interactive Visualizations for Preferential Choice by Jeanette Bautista and Giuseppe Carenini

Short Description

The authors of this paper tried to not only show the usefulness of Value Charts to support preferential choice, which is finding the best option out of a set of alternatives. Furthermore, they compared two types of Value Charts: a horizontal version against a vertical version. The outcome of this extensive user study was that Value Charts in general and in particular Vertical Value Charts (abbreviated VC+V) seemed to be very effective in supporting decision making.

Process of decision making

The process of effective preferential choice can be divided into 3 steps according to prescriptive decision theory.

Step 1 / Model construction phase: the decision maker (abbr. DM) finds objectives, which are important to him/her. The degree of importance is also chosen.

Step 2 / Inspection phase: DM analyzes his/her preference model as applied to a set of alternatives.

Step 3 / Sensitivity analysis: DM is able to answer "what if" questions - such as "if we make a slight change in one or more aspects of the model, does it effect the optimal decision?"

In the development of interactive tools for preferential choice, we argue that full support for - and fluid interaction between - all three phases are essential in making good decisions.

[Bautista and Carenini, 2008]

ValueCharts+

ValueChart+is a set of interactive visualization techniques for preferential choice and is an improvement of ValueCharts. It supports the DM in the 3 phases described above. In an Additive Multiattribute Value Function the DM’s objectives are hierarchically organized. In VC+ this hierarchy is displayed as an exploded stacked-bar.

Thevertical heightofeachrowindicatestherelativeweight assignedtoeachobjective(e.g., sizeismuchlessimportant thaninternet-access). Eachcolumnrepresents analterna- tive,thuseachcellportraysanobjectivecorrespondingtoan alternative(bottom-right quadrant). Theamount of filled colorrelativetocell sizedepictsthealternative’spreference

Figures

Shown above is the horizontal version of a ValueChart+ presented by Bautista et Carenini

Shown above is the vertical version of a ValueChart+ presented by Bautista et Carenini

References

An empirical evaluation of interactive visualizations for preferential choice