Towards Rigorously Designed Preference Visualizations for Group Decision Making

Group decision making is when two or more individuals must collectively choose among a competing set of alternatives based on their individual preferences. In these situations, it can be helpful for decision makers to model and visually compare their preferences in order to better understand each others’ points of view. Although a number of tools for preference modelling and inspection exist, none are based on detailed data and task models that capture the demands of group decision making in particular. This paper is a first step in addressing this gap. By going through the four stages of the nested model of visualization design, we have developed and tested a prototype to support group decision making when decision makers express their preferences directly on the alternatives.