Information visualisation for science and policy: engaging users and avoiding bias

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2014.01.003

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

Volume 29, Issue 3, March 2014, Pages 148-157

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2014.01.003 Get rights and content

Highlights

•
Science and policy rely on reliable and unbiased communications.
•
Visualisations and graphics are a powerful means to communicate.
•
Ecology lacks appropriate expertise, skills, and knowledge in visualisation.
•
Great opportunities are available if we rethink the role of visualisation in our work.
•
The way we think about visualisation needs to be reframed within our disciplines.

Visualisations and graphics are fundamental to studying complex subject matter. However, beyond acknowledging this value, scientists and science-policy programmes rarely consider how visualisations can enable discovery, create engaging and robust reporting, or support online resources. Producing accessible and unbiased visualisations from complicated, uncertain data requires expertise and knowledge from science, policy, computing, and design. However, visualisation is rarely found in our scientific training, organisations, or collaborations. As new policy programmes develop [e.g., the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)], we need information visualisation to permeate increasingly both the work of scientists and science policy. The alternative is increased potential for missed discoveries, miscommunications, and, at worst, creating a bias towards the research that is easiest to display.

Section snippets

Visualisation: exploring and communicating information

Visualisations and graphics are the most universally engaging of outputs. Yet, the issues of producing informative, engaging, and unbiased visualisations (exploratory graphics to publication figures, all the way to interactive web interfaces) have received little attention in the biodiversity sciences, or science policy (see Glossary) areas. This is despite huge recent developments in the expertise, knowledge, software, web technologies, and the cultural understanding of both visualisation and

Truth and beauty: what we hide in visualisations

Science can have an awkward relation with style and beauty. For instance, visualisations that are highly engaging can appear disassociated from data sources [22], appear to advocate particular information by giving it prominence [23], or good visualisations might be interpreted as effort diverted away from the science. However, irrespective of content or function, compelling graphics can also create an impression of truth [24] (a so-called ‘Cartohypnosis’ [25]) and a lower value or reputation

Designing for nonscientific audiences

Science-policy audiences are highly diverse 13, 38 and often receive information in richer digital environments (e.g., online applications, software, or games) than science typically provides. The page-limited print layouts of academic journals can impose rigid technical formats onto graphics that limit their reuse [42]; for instance, where huge numbers of individually informative pixels are irretrievably crammed into small rasterised images [43] (Figure 2C) and where graphics are otherwise

Reducing the multidimensionality of complicated information

Most visual interfaces are 2D (i.e., paper or computer displays) and present considerable challenges for displaying complex multidimensional information (Figure 1) [49]. For instance, it can be difficult to include further information (such as uncertainty) into heat maps and choropleth maps (Figure 2D) because the primary axes are already fixed to the spatial dimensions of the data. Any further information must then be incorporated by elaborating on the map by redesigning the glyphs for each

Addressing a transdisciplinary problem

Rather than being a design or technical service that can be outsourced as an afterthought, appropriate information visualisation and communication strategies must come from early integration of visualisation tools and expertise. For instance, by linking those who contribute to, curate, and analyse data and information sources, to designers, communicators, and engineers, and then to those who collate and apply that knowledge (Box 1). Vibrant research programmes exist in each of these domains,

Concluding remarks and practical steps

Success in both science and policy are predicated on reliable and unbiased understanding. Furthermore, strategies for communicating and curating of knowledge are fundamental to the structure and impact of both science and science–policy interfaces [69]^* (http://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session35/IAC_CommunicationStrategy.pdf). Thus, it is surprising, if not a major failure, that visualisation and visual communication have been so overlooked in the training of scientists [10] and within the

Acknowledgements

We thank Microsoft Research Connections for funding the 2-day workshop ‘Visualising the future of our planet - Can we do better than heat maps?’ (organised by G.J.M.; April 2012), and thank all attendees for their contributions during the workshop (Gregor Aisch, David Alderson, Lisa Evans, Mark Freeman, Peter Gassner, Sean Hanna, Jack Harrison, Benjamin Henning, Tim Jupp, Lindsay Lee, Vassily Lyutsarev, Ayman Mogniegh, Rod Page, Mike Pearson, Drew Purves, Tim Regan, and Ian Short). We are very

Glossary

Brushing: where a user positions the cursor or pointer on a screen to activate a secondary function in an interactive application. For instance, by selecting a subset of data via a mouse, which then highlights certain values by changing colour or appearance, or triggering another operation, such as activating a label by hovering over a subset of the visualisation.
Choropleth map: a map visualisation where political regions, biomes, or other areas are colour coded for the value of a variable within

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View full text

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

OpinionInformation visualisation for science and policy: engaging users and avoiding bias

Highlights

Section snippets

Visualisation: exploring and communicating information

Truth and beauty: what we hide in visualisations

Designing for nonscientific audiences

Reducing the multidimensionality of complicated information

Addressing a transdisciplinary problem

Concluding remarks and practical steps

Acknowledgements

Glossary

Trends Ecol. Evol.

Trends Ecol. Evol.

Cognition

Curr. Opin. Chem. Biol.

J. Hist. Geogr.

Trends Ecol. Evol.

Ecol. Model.

Trends Ecol. Evol.

Procedia Environ. Sci.

Trends Ecol. Evol.

Trends Ecol. Evol.

Environ. Sci. Policy

Trends Ecol. Evol.

Ecological forecasts: an emerging imperative

Science

Ecology. The biodiversity and ecosystem services science–policy interface

Science

Future Earth: Research for Global Sustainability: Draft Initial Design Report

Ecology. Toward a global biodiversity observing system

Science

Scenarios for global biodiversity in the 21st century

Science

A continental strategy for the National Ecological Observatory Network

Front. Ecol. Envrion.

Entering the century of the environment: a new social contract for science

Science

New assessment methods and the characterisation of future conditions. Climate change 2007: impacts adaptation and vulnerability

COMPASS: navigating the rules of scientific engagement

PLoS Biol.

Foreword

Nat. Methods

Science as an Open Enterprise

Guidance Note for Lead Authors of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report on Consistent Treatment of Uncertainties

Conservation stories, conservation science, and the role of the intergovernmental platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services

Conserv. Biol.

Review by quality not quantity for better policy

Nature

Applying the science of communication to the communication of science

Clim. Change

visualizing geospatial information uncertainty: what we know and what we need to know

Cartogr. Geogr. Info. Sci.

Changing the equation on scientific data visualization

Science

Future challenges and unsolved problems (in human-centered visualization)

Lect. Notes Comput. Sci.

End-user development: an emerging paradigm

InfoVis is so much more: a comment on Gelman and Unwin and an invitation to consider the opportunities

J. Comput. Graph. Stat.

The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks

Nature Climate Change

An atlas of ignorance: a needed stimulus to honest thinking and hard work

Proc. Am. Philos. Soc.

Cartohypnosis

Sci. Mon.

A constant error in psychological ratings

J. Appl. Psychol.

Apparent usability vs. inherent usability:experimental analysis on the determinants of the apparent usability

Trust and mistrust of online health sites

Opinion
Information visualisation for science and policy: engaging users and avoiding bias