Seeing Through Uncertainty: Optical Operations as a Design Vocabulary for Uncertainty Visualization

Authors

Stephen Brooks (Dalhousie University)

Keywords

Uncertainty visualization, optical effects, design vocabulary.

Abstract

Uncertainty visualizations often require viewers to interpret additional marks, glyphs, bands, or statistical conventions layered onto a primary display. We explore a complementary approach: rendering uncertainty as an optical condition of seeing. In this framing, data are viewed through an imperfect medium whose apparent physical properties are controlled by uncertainty. We introduce a design vocabulary of optical operations for uncertainty visualization, including blur, frost, absorption, roughness, thickness, microfacet scattering, refraction, and caustics. We organize these operations by how they affect visual information: suppressive operations reduce visibility, diffusive operations reduce recoverability, displacive operations alter apparent position, and generative operations create new apparent structure. This distinction suggests a mapping between degradation and value uncertainty, and between displacement and positional uncertainty, while identifying caustics and other structure-generating effects as high-risk sources of visual confounds.