Visualizing Trust: How Chart Embellishments Influence Perceptions of Credibility

Area of Science:

• Information Visualization
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Effective data visualizations are crucial for clear communication and decision-making.
• Poorly designed visualizations can lead to misinterpretation and reduced credibility.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how visual embellishments in data visualizations affect perceived message credibility.
• To differentiate between holistic and component-level effects of design elements on trust.

Main Methods:

• Two crowdsourced experiments were conducted.
• Experiment 1: Compared plain bar charts with cartoon-style and image-style variants.
• Experiment 2: Systematically varied color, font, and bar style to isolate effects.

Main Results:

• The impact of embellishments is complex and context-dependent.
• Color and image-style bars generally increased perceived credibility.
• Hand-drawn fonts and cartoon-style bars significantly decreased perceived credibility.

Conclusions:

• Design choices in data visualization have a measurable effect on message credibility.
• Actionable guidelines can be developed to create more effective and credible visualizations.
• Understanding these factors is key to building viewer trust in data.