2D versus 3D Visualizations in Decision Support â•fi The Impact of Decision Makersâ•Ž Perceptions

Decision makers often do not easily understand the decision space, i.e. the available alternatives and relations among their attributes. Misunderstanding the relations between attributes might lead to a bad decision. Recent research in decision analysis has addressed this problem and proposed to support decision makers with visual information about the decision space. However, the question of which visualization method and format supports decision makers best is largely unanswered. We focus on coordinate systems as visualization method and investigate the impact of 2D and 3D formats on decision making processes. We show that 3D is not superior to 2D in terms of several decision making performance variables, such as time to make a decision. We, however, provide first evidence that 2D and 3D visualizations differ in the decision makers’ perceptions and that these differences are moderated by the complexity of the decision space.