Accounting for Availability Biases in Information Visualization

The availability heuristic is a strategy that people use to make quick decisions but often lead to systematic errors. We propose three ways that visualization could facilitate unbiased decisionmaking. First, visualizations can alter the way our memory stores the events for later recall, so as to improve users' long-term intuitions. Second, the known biases could lead to new visualization guidelines. Third, we suggest the design of decisionmaking tools that are inspired by heuristics, e.g. suggesting intuitive approximations, rather than target to present exhaustive comparisons of all possible outcomes, or automated solutions for choosing decisions.