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People increasingly rely on visual representations of information to explore and make sense of data. However, people have inherent biases that often lead to errors and inefficiencies in the decision making process. The goal of our research is to help people make better decisions while exploring and analyzing data using visualizations. We introduce computational methods for quantifying an analyst’s biases based on their interactions in the visualization. Using that information, we illustrate ways to modify or design new visualization systems that mitigate biased decision making.

In collaboration with policial science researchers from Georgia State University and University at Albany, we are developing augmented reality-based experiments to examine the impact of grievance, opportunity and risk as motivating factors when choosing to engage in political protest or terrorism. Study participants assume the role of a fictional ethnic minority in a fictional country and engage in dialogs with virtual characters that attempt to persude the participant to join a peaceful student-led protest or join a violent resistance movement.

Where should a head worn display (HWD) be placed for optimal viewing? Does the optimal position change between reading, working on a physical task like order picking, or social conversation? How do we test such issues? Our ongoing studies on user comfort and performance suggest the optimal placement is somewhere between 10 and 20 degrees off-center toward the ear.