Naïve Realism: Folk Fallacies in the Design and Use of Visual Displays

Abstract

Often implicit in visual display design and development is a gold standard of photorealism. By approximating direct perception, photorealism appeals to users and designers by being both attractive and apparently effortless. The vexing result from numerous performance evaluations, though, is that increasing realism often impairs performance. Smallman and St. John (2005) labeled misplaced faith in realistic information display Naı¨ve Realism and theorized it resulted from a triplet of folk fallacies about perception. Here, we illustrate issues associated with the wider trend towards realism by focusing on a specific current trend for high-fidelity perspective view (3D) geospatial displays. In two experiments, we validated Naïve Realism for different terrain understanding tasks, explored whether certain individuals are particularly prone to Naïve Realism, and determined the ability of task feedback to mitigate Naïve Realism. Performance was measured for laying and judging a concealed route across realistic terrain shown in different display formats. Task feedback was either implicit, in Experiment 1, or explicit in Experiment 2. Prospective and retrospective intuitions about the best display formats for the tasks were recorded and then related to task performance and participant spatial ability. Participants generally intuited they would perform tasks better with more realism than they actually required. For example, counter to intuitions, lowering fidelity of the terrain display revealed the gross scene layout needed to lay a well-concealed route. Individuals of high spatial ability calibrated their intuitions with only implicit task feedback, whereas those of low spatial ability required salient, explicit feedback to calibrate their intuitions about display realism. Results are discussed in the wider context of applying perceptual science to display design, and combating folk fallacies.

ON THE USABILITY AND USEFULNESS OF 3D (GEO)VISUALIZATIONS – A FOCUS ON VIRTUAL REALITY ENVIRONMENTS

“…When we consider an empirical result, we should pay attention to what type of 3D has been tested. Furthermore, as in all visualizations, related design choices (Oh et al, 2011) such as interactivity (e.g., Amini et al, 2014), use of color (e.g., Brychtová & Çöltekin, 2016), or degree of realism e.g., phototextures, virtual environments (e.g., Boér et al, 2013;Smallman & Cook, 2011).…”

Effects of cognitive design principles on user’s performance and preference

“…Additionally, participants in our study expressed preferences after having used both displays to find information about soccer games, such that they can be compared on the same merit. However, it may also be interesting to compare these judgments to preferences of people who have not (yet) used the designs since intuitions about visual representations may not always be in line with actual efficiency (Smallman & Cook 2011).…”

Self-portraits of the brain: cognitive science, data visualization, and communicating brain structure and function

“…Systematic departures from realism are valuable because they promote high-level interpretation, deemphasize irrelevant and potentially misleading details, and enable viewers to see overall trends that might otherwise be masked [56,57]. Interestingly, several studies have revealed that both novices and experts have a tendency to wrongly believe that their performance will be better with realistic compared with idealized visualizations, when the reverse is true [58]. For example, many participants viewing weather maps intuited that task-irrelevant variables and realism would improve their interpretive performance, when they were in fact hindered by their inclusion [59].…”

“…Detailed visualizations that are appropriate for focused identification tasks are inappropriate for providing an overview of major regions [58]. Bar and box-plot graphs emphasize main effects in an experiment, whereas line graphs emphasize interactions between variables [14,69,70].…”