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Striking a balance of agency with interactive sea level rise viewers

Explore the effects of sea level rise on a coastal city, assess the impact on landmarks, and use interactive tools to visualize potential scenarios. Discover how to design effective tools for decision-making and risk assessment.

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Striking a balance of agency with interactive sea level rise viewers

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  1. Striking a balance of agency with interactive sea level rise viewers Daniel P. Richards Old Dominion University Norfolk, VA @dprichards

  2. I Activity

  3. Go to: ss2.climatecentral.org Tasks: • Locate a coastal city of personal relevance to you. • Use the slider tool on the left-hand side to explore the effects of water on the region. Make an overall assessment. • Identify a specific landmark. How many feet until the landmark is affected by water? • Using one of the layers at the bottom, make a second assessment about the region. Risk Zone Map

  4. Interactive Sea Level Rise Viewers (ISLRVs) • ISLRVs (Stephens et al., 2014) are: • map-based visualization tools that display projections of sea level rise scenarios to communicate their impacts on coastal areas; • tools developed to communicate and inform about the results of scientific computer modeling and help users visualize the potential impacts of sea level rise in geographic locations of interest to them, therefore extending and intensifying the reach and impact of scientific research; • tools that consist of a base geographic map on which visual representations of potential future SLR impact scenarios can be layered (i.e., displayed), with various options for altering the viewpoint and scenario details.

  5. NOAA’s Digital Coast Sarasota Bay SLR Map Viewer USGS SLR Visualization

  6. II Theory

  7. How to Study Them? • Genre? • Narrative? • Usefulness? • Agency?

  8. Balance of Agency • Rawlins & Wilson (2014) • Interactive Data Displays (IDD) • 1—User • 2—Tool • 3—Designer • Use Herndl & Licona (2007) to discuss intersection of individual choices and determinant structure.

  9. Balance of Agency “Interactive data displays involve an almost infinite range of rhetorical situations and types of communications. Rather than attempting to classify all of these situations and communications as a single genre, we examine how IDDs provide opportunities for knowledge creation through designer-user collaboration. The common thread that unites the different categories across our typology, then, is agency and not genre” (p. 306).

  10. Agency in ISLRVs • Increasing user agency has been described as a good in and of itself in technical communication (as well as narrative-driven gaming). • Stephens (2015): Argues that affording users a high level of agency during interaction (i.e., providing a wide range of choices and not rhetorically framing their experience) may negatively affect thinking with the tool in a situated context. • Demonstrates how authorial messaging and constraints on the range of SLR that can be displayed can better inform understanding and decision-making.

  11. Agency in ISLRVs • Two spaces of agency: • Thinking within the tool • Thinking with the tool (augment cognition for decision making in the real world [Liu & Stasko, 2010]) • This approach is particularly applicable to data visualization tools that are designed to visualize risk and support decision-making. • How can developers best design them to be effective and useful (Mirel) for users? • Tools that incorporate a high level of flexibility in visualizing risk scenarios may lead to incorrect assessments of risk, and therefore poorly support decision-making.

  12. III Research Designs

  13. Designing for Decision-Making • Focus: Designing the tools for effective decision-making. • Audience: Public (most testing has been with SMEs) • Mode: Interactivity (limitation of Rawlins and Wilson’s work, although users can produce static documents for rhetorical purposes). • Measurements: Personal decision-making and personal and public risk assessments. • Purpose: Further refine notion of “balance” in the decision-making and risk assessment processes.

  14. First Stage of Research Following Mirel (1998) and Albers (2003), this study was aimed atunderstanding the projected tasks and needs of decision makers who will serve as the audience for the tool as well as what these specialized users see as desired tool affordances. Intended to provide early insight into struggles and contexts of use, and falls in line with Grabill and Simmons’s (1998) recommendation for audience involvement in the design of risk communication in order to define and display risk inclusively.

  15. First Stage of Research • RQ1: What happens when the general public encounters an ISLRV? • RQ2: How can these tools be better designed for residents? • 12 systematically-sampled local residents (258 flyers sent, regular mail) • 6 female, 6 male • Time of residence: 5-50 years • Ages: <35 (5), 36-65 (4), >65 (3) • Semi-structured contextual interviews, with think-aloud protocol and screencasting(~45 minutes, in person)

  16. First Stage: Findings • Three Use Patterns: • Exploration • Tutorial • Directed Inquiry • No change in risk perceptions after use (scale: alarm, concern, skeptical) • Changes to ISLRV: • Accentuated, 3-D slider tool • Multiple audience

  17. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things Seven Principles for Transforming Difficult Tasks into Simple Ones • Use knowledge in the world and in the head • Simplify the structure of tasks • Make things visible • Get the mappings right • Exploit the power of constraints • Design for error • When all else fails, standardize

  18. Second Stage of Research • UserTesting.com: 41 participants • 36 questions, approximately 20-40 minutes in length • Yielded 19 hours of screencasts, recently transcribed • Designed tasks and scenarios based upon the needs and patterns of first study. • General assessment of risk for region • Vulnerability of specific landmark • Vulnerability moving forward at current trend

  19. Second Stage: Preliminary Findings • Functionality and nature of slider tool • Cf. Stephens (2015) where scale impacted interpretation (users wanted refined numeration) • Belief in accurate assessments vs. actual accurate assessments • Relationship between water levels and data layers unclear • Slider tool could have no impact, unconfirmed belief in increase in SLR • Individual vs. Community • “I don’t see the purpose of the ethnicity layer.” • Most able to accomplish task of identifying feet at which landmark affected

  20. IV Future Typologies

  21. How Do We Study These? • Focus on one specific tool rather than several in order to gain depth of knowledge of use. • Situated use/contextual inquiry of interactive SLR viewers (ISLRVs) by audiences as decision-support and risk assessment tools.

  22. Risk Communication

  23. Individual Volition (Open SLR Data Exploration) Structural Constraints (Risk-Based Scenarios)

  24. Balancing Agency in ISLRVs • How much agency do we grant users given what is at stake? • Must balance: engagement, usefulness, and accuracy. • Moving towards a more refined, specific typology…

  25. Balancing Agency in ISLRVs • Realism vs. Abstract (MacEachern et al.) • Scenario vs. Open Exploration • Tutorial vs. Open Exploration • Individual vs. Community • Current vs. Future • Key: Slider tool--changes the entire use of the tool--real interactivity

  26. @dprichards danielrichards.net Daniel P. Richards Old Dominion University Norfolk, VA

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