Visual Decision Aid Research Articles

A Visual Decision Aid for Gear Materials Selection

Materials play an important role during the entire design process and the designers need to identify materials with specific functionalities in order to find out feasible design concepts. While selecting materials for engineering designs from an ever-increasing array of alternatives, with each having its own characteristics, applications, advantages and limitations, a clear understanding of the functional requirements for each individual component is required and various important criteria need to be considered. Although various approaches have already been adopted by the past researchers to solve the material selection problems, they all require profound knowledge in mathematics from the part of the designers for their implementation. This paper proposes the application of an integrated preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluation and geometrical analysis for interactive aid method as a visual decision aid for material selection. Two real time gear material selection problems are solved which prove the potentiality and usefulness of this combined approach. It is observed that Nitralloy 135M and Nylon glass fiber reinforced 6/6 are respectively the choicest metallic and non-metallic gear materials.

Application of PROMETHEE-GAIA method for non-traditional machining processes selection

Article history: Received April 17, 2012 Accepted 11 June 2012 Available online June 12 2012 With ever increasing demand for manufactured products of hard alloys and metals with high surface finish and complex shape geometry, more interest is now being paid to non-traditional machining (NTM) processes, where energy in its direct form is used to remove material from workpiece surface. Compared to conventional machining processes, NTM processes possess almost unlimited capabilities and there is a strong believe that use of NTM processes would go on increasing in diverse range of applications. Presence of a large number of NTM processes along with complex characteristics and capabilities, and lack of experts in NTM process selection domain compel for development of a structured approach for NTM process selection for a given machining application. Past researchers have already attempted to solve NTM process selection problems using various complex mathematical approaches which often require a profound knowledge in mathematics/artificial intelligence from the part of process engineers. In this paper, four NTM process selection problems are solved using an integrated PROMETHEE (preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluation) and GAIA (geometrical analysis for interactive aid) method which would act as a visual decision aid to the process engineers. The observed results are quite satisfactory and exactly match with the expected solutions. © 2012 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Implementation of a Patient-Oriented Visual Decision Aid for CRC Screening in an Effort to Increase Completed Colonoscopy Rates Among an Inner-City Population

Purpose: Colon cancer is the 2nd leading cause of cancer deaths in the USA, and a major barrier to screening is the poor compliance with scheduling a colonoscopy. The purpose of the study is to increase compliance rates for screening colonoscopy among an inner city population, using a non-physician educator along with a visual decision aid. Methods: This is a randomized control study. Patients evaluated in the general medicine clinic and referred for screening colonoscopy to the GI clinic were directed to a non-physician educator, and invited to participate in the study. After obtaining consent, patients were randomized to either red (control) or green (intervention) groups, and all patients received a brief demographic questionnaire. Patients in the control group received pamphlets from the American Cancer Society and STOP Colon and Rectal Cancer Society. As is the current standard of care, patients were informed regarding the need to be screened, and would receive a phone call reminder 3 days prior to the exam. Patients in the intervention group attended an educational session where they were read a pre-written script and shown a flip-chart (visual decision aid). The education included the risks of colon cancer, natural progression of colonic polyps, a description and illustration of a colonoscopy, and its preparation. Similarly they would receive a phone call reminder 3 days prior to the exam. Results: To date 46 patients are enrolled, 24 randomized to the control and 22 to the intervention groups. In the control group, 20/24 patients (83.3%) scheduled the initial appointment at GI clinic; only 9/20 (45%) kept the appointment and scheduled a colonoscopy. In the intervention group 18/22 patients (81%) scheduled the initial appointment, with 11/18 (61.1%) keeping the appointment and scheduling a colonoscopy. Of interest, to date all patients that have made appointments for colonoscopy have had them completed. The data provides for a 16.11% increase in completed colonoscopy rates (90% CI = −10.2% to 42.42%), with a Number Needed to Treat of 7. Conclusion: This is an ongoing study, but based on the initial data there is a statistically significant difference between the groups. The effectiveness of the educational intervention is in helping patients maintain their appointment, thereby reducing the no-show rate in GI clinic. This low-cost intervention could be successfully implemented in an office setting by non-physician staff with the proper education regarding colonoscopy procedures and screening. We have successfully shown our intervention promotes a 16% increase in appointments made when a visual decision aid is implemented to increase patient education regarding the procedure.

Decision Making by Low‐Literacy Consumers in the Presence of Point‐of‐Purchase Information

Low‐literacy consumers face disadvantages when making product choices. This article presents the results of two studies designed to explore differences in decision‐making behavior across consumer literacy levels, focusing on consumers’ ability to evaluate information in print ads and product packaging. The authors demonstrate that the presence of a visual decision aid at the point of purchase can improve choice for low‐literacy consumers.

A ‘Parallel Coordinate’ Editor as a Visual Decision aid in a Multi-Objective Concurrent Control Engineering Environment

A search-based multi-objective analysis and design approach is a base-line prerequisite for Concurrent Control Engineering; e.g. a multi-disciplinary integration of control engineering methods with the data and procedures of complementary engineering disciplines in view of holistic system optimization. Search-based multi-objective analysis and design is iterative by nature and it requires decision inter-action based on trade-off analysis. Trade-off analysis involves detection of multivariate relations in multidimensional data. Multidimensional data, say of 5, 6 or higher dimensions, can be visualized by ‘parallel coordinates’. An interactive editor for parallel coordinates is implemented in a database environment to allow a designer to analyze previous design steps and thereby providing him with a decision support for possible changes in his search direction. The parallel-coordinate editor supports an interactive reduction of the dimensionality of data, selecting subsets of data, scanning data in arbitrary directions, etc. This development is along the lines of the currently evolving research area of ‘Algorithm Animation‘. Since the parallel coordinate editor is not bound to data produced by a special algorithm, it can be used for actively exploring the dynamic behavior of any computational procedure. This makes it well suited for the visual decision support of an iterative and interactive search-based design process.