Improving Evaluation Using Visualization Decision-Making Models: A Practical Guide

In visualization research, evaluation is a crucial step to assess the impact of visualization on decision-making. Existing work often gauges how good a visualization is by measuring its ability to induce accurate and fast judgment. While those measures provide some insight into the efficacy of a graph, underlying cognitive processes responsible for reasoning and judgment are often overlooked when they can have significant implications for visualization recommendation. Cognitive processes do not need to be a black box. There exists multiple models that describe decision processes, such as theories from behavioral economics and cognitive science. In this chapter, we compare and contrast different models and advocate for the inclusion of cognitive models for visualization evaluation in the context of decision-making. The goal of this work is to show visualization researchers the advantages of adopting a more mechanistic approach to evaluation at the intersection of visualization and cognitive science.