"The Worst Weather In America": Augmenting the Information Design of Extreme Cold Weather Forecasts
Michael Correll, Jay Broccolo, Drew Bush
TLDR
This paper explores using color-coded icons to improve extreme cold weather forecasts, finding they increase perceived risk for visitors.
Key contributions
- Tested color-coded hazard icons to visually summarize text-heavy extreme weather forecasts.
- Icons increased perceived risk for activities on Mount Washington in a crowd-sourced study.
- Design intervention was informed by a participatory workshop's suggestions.
- Highlights ethical considerations and design challenges for communicating hazards to diverse audiences.
Why it matters
Clear communication of extreme weather hazards is crucial for visitor safety, especially in volatile environments like Mount Washington. This research provides insights into how visual design, specifically icons, can impact risk perception and highlights ongoing challenges in creating universally accessible forecasts.
Original Abstract
Mount Washington is home to extreme, and extremely volatile, weather conditions. Consulting a weather forecast of conditions at the summit is vital for making one's visit as safe as possible. Using the discussion and suggestions arising from a participatory workshop as input, we test a design intervention employing color-coded hazard icons to function as visual summaries of Mount Washington Observatory's current text-heavy forecast through a crowd-sourced study. We find that the use of icons increases the perceived risk of activities involving visiting the mountain. However, we highlight remaining questions around visualization design and design ethics that warrant further study in the domain of how best to communicate cold weather hazards in ways that are mindful of the diversity of literacies and experiences of visitors.
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