Seeing is believing: Climate change graph design and user judgments of credibility, usability, and risk

Psychological science can be used to inform climate graph design, resulting in more meaningful and useful graphs for communication, especially with non-scientists. In this study, we redesigned from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) compared participant attention perceptions between original novel designs pre-/post-surveys, eye-tracking, usability ranking activities, interviews. Participants were selected lower content knowledge risk perception of a sample undergraduate students southeastern U.S. Here, demonstrate our robust redesign process associated impacts participants’ usability, scientist credibility, change. These findings indicate that interacting change may impact are relevant individuals’ motivation take action address across political audiences, possibly even so among self-identified Conservatives. Additionally, participants who viewed designed align research-informed best practices had greater increases credibility risk, though these contrasts not statistically significant (p > 0.05). rated as being trustworthy, which is critical successful qualitative results provide possible explanation initial points exploration future research.