The Impact of Uncertainty Visualizations on Team Decision Making and Problem Solving

Abstract

This paper describes a study comparing two decision support systems (DSS) and their impact on team decision making processes. One DSS provided a simple way for users to describe and visualize the relative uncertainty in each alternative under consideration. The other did not. We found that the “uncertainty” DSS significantly improved designers’ ability to assess whether or not they had sufficient information to choose the “best” from a set of alternatives. Additionally, teams that used the “uncertainty” DSS were far more likely to spend time discussing the uncertainty and how to manage it. These results indicate that a relatively simply visualization can change the way in which design teams think about design, and how they structure their discussions.